Arts & Entertainment Compass

Written and Performed by Laura Hooper
Directed by Emma Canalese
Performed in the Sargent Theatre in the American Theatre for Actors.

Most cultures have a tradition of honoring their ancestors. Sometimes you keep their remains in an urn on the mantle. Other times you have a tradition of visiting their gravesite. Not very often do you produce a show in honor of the memory of your own family matriarch!

This incredibly heartfelt play "And This One's True" was full of stories that are so wild, so spicy, they could only be true! No writer
could ever have made them up. The stories told by actress and playwright Laura Hooper centered around her own grandmother "Mamie Rae." These delicious slices of the past smacked of tall tales. This
was a lady about which legends are written. For instance, there was a whole story where Mamie got engaged and then later turned him down!
After a rocky start in England, Mamie Rae faced leaving behind her family and everything she knew to move to New Zealand with her beloved husband, where she lived a hard frontier life. I was enchanted by the stories about the cow that only she could milk, and the one about the bull that bashed her husband's head in and changed him forever.

I was struck by how delicately Laura as our main character tied together emotions of joy and pain. How on the one hand she could be recounting how good of a man her husband was, and on the other hand sharing how awful he was when he got drunk. Our actress Laura Hooper was charismatic, hilarious, full of energy, and bold. I was instantly in love with how she welcomed us into her story (come as you are, warm, never taking herself too seriously). Where Laura's show excelled
was the audience participation. Not only were there silly bits, there were serious moments also. I particularly loved the cow costume! And the adaptation of "Midsummer Night's Dream." The sing along was also a hoot - and luckily enough there were some audience members who knew the song and sang along loudly!

In between these sweet and happy memories of the past were shocking tales of casual cruelty and debauchery. When all the men around her
were falling apart, Mamie held it all together. In much the same way, the production was plagued by technical struggles where the computer
hooked into the sound system continuously went ding and beep. These distractions were completely unnecessary, and I would have rather there were no projections at all. When I come to the theatre I really want to be transported away from the sounds of a cell phone. I particularly liked that whenever Laura got lost in the sauce, she
would just look up to the light booth and ask her SM "Where was I?" and the SM would give her the next paragraph heading, and Laura would jump right in. The casual exchange made us feel safe and taken care of. It never felt unprofessional, and always felt like Laura wanted to make sure we heard every juicy little tidbit of the story, and didn't
accidentally leave anything out.

I wasn't sure what our author and actress was trying to do with the ending of the show. This is sort of where the show went off the deep end. We invoked the spirits and held a seance and kept hearing the voice of a shrink that was calling us out. It was a bit confusing. I believe the general idea was we were in limbo with Mamie, looking back
on her life and on the karmic balance of her achievements.

Unfortunately the finale question and answer session with onstage
audience members was a bit too slow, and so the action came to a grinding halt. The levity of our beginning and the confusion of the ending made me feel like this was two shows strapped together in a
trench coat. Regardless, I was so grateful to be part of Mamie Rae's last moments. Laura had a beautiful shining presence about her, and
her grandmother is surely smiling down on her.

Moral of the story: Live your Life in a way that somebody wants to write a play about you.