This entertaining show is both delightful and poignant. While Jann occasionally reclines on the canvas-draped sofa, the only nudity here is Jann’s naked truth. I take that back, her truth is dressed in comedy.

The set is welcoming and completely ready for a full show. And, yet, it’s ready to become something else. It’s a set of white canvases waiting for paint, waiting for Jann to whirl across it spilling beige and blue and green.

Sometimes you’re watching an energetic, but deeply heart-wounded woman try to make sense of her life, try to rise above the abuse in her past. And sometimes you’re watching her inner child dance about the stage in love with creativity and art and self-expression and self-exploration and self-absorption. And from the spaces between grow the weeds of the painful truth, the full impact of which, is deflected by Jann’s alive and healthy sense of humor. So much so, that despite the weighty subject matter, Jann simply doesn’t allow the play to slip into depression.

In fact, her pace is wonderful, her movement and use of the stage feel warmly natural and alive, and the lighting, refreshingly effective. She has a gift for storytelling, storyweaving, audience connection and laughter. Her production is well written and well performed, even the hiccups accent it more than hinder. I have only positive things to say, save for one. And that’s the immediate build before the climax. I think the play on the whole could be improved by developing a bit more of the ‘how’ changes happen in her and in her mother.

Still this is a play well worth seeing. If you won’t see it for yourself, see it for your therapist. The mix of humor with real life, and real honesty make for an affecting production for the audiences, and undoubtedly performing arts therapy for the actor.

-- Books by Ross Anthony, Author/Illustrator --