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We were told after their Friday night performance, that we had been their toughest audience yet. We didn't laugh quite as heartily or as often as others had before us. We didn't gasp or sigh or exhale audibly at all the key moments in each woman's solo scenes. Well, it wasn't for lack of interest in the subject matter.
Nice Tits is a collection of one acts all centered around a woman's relationship with her breasts. A mixture of the funny, the dramatic and the traumatic, the play is meant to explore the idea of breasts as "metaphors for the female experience."
Martini Republic felt the show was a little preachy. A PSA disguised in lingerie. LAist didn't feel preached to. More we felt the show a little uneven. Bettina Adger's performance, travelling through face and time as she looked at her breasts and body through her mother's, her friends' and boys' eyes is, by far, the highlight of the show (ed. note: Both Bettina Adger and Catherine Kamei are friends. Take our bias as you will) and Stefanie Seifer and CJ Hincks also shine. Robin McDonald's "John Pace" was the best written. It's a tale of molestation that feels like real life and less like an after-school special. Anne Wyndham's "Traverse City, Michigan" has similar aspirations but, at least on this night, didn't come off as powerfully as it should have.
Livia Trevino's "Chi-Chis" was the only moment in the show when breast and cultural identity are intertwined. We would've loved more of that. If "Nice Tits" is meant to act as a metaphor for the female experience, it gives a very small world that these breasts live in. The vast majority of the stories are built on breast as sexual object, breast as self-identity, breast as burden.
We think there's more to be said about boobies.
That said, we enjoyed ourselves. We laughed. And we got to see our friends shine.
You can get a view of Nice Tits tonight at the Alliance Theatre in Burbank at 7pm. The show runs next weekend as well.
