For young artists, the difficulty of creating work isn't about getting a chance. It's about coping with rejection -- frequent, cold and unrelenting. In Sarah Shaefer's play about a young NYU grad, Amelia, played by Leslie Shires, who is spiraling into alcoholism and borderline psychosis, rejection is the villain.
The stage itself sets the tone: a gray, bleak and unforgiving environment. We first taste Amelia's raw and palpable desperation in a failed addition, where she crumbles against the unapologetic coldness of New York City's art establishment. The perfect casual obnoxiousness of an apathetic director, played by Chris Stack, crunching down on salt and vinegar chips as Amelia literally attempts to bare all, sounds comical in thought. On stage, it just hurts. It hurts, because she tries. Hard. Unrepentantly, and never stopping. She has a thirst for acceptance that the world consistently denies.
That moment in her life echoes down into the recesses of her path to the bottom. From the rejection of her predatory relationship with a bartender (also played by Stack), to her ex fiancé (played by Maxwell Hamilton) and his cold reluctance, Amelia's search for warmth in a cold world is futile.
What makes "The Gin Baby" work is the production's unabashed eagerness to show everything -- to 'go there'. We see sexual assault, self-mutilation, and full-faced manic denial explicitly, without any fade-to-black cues. Though some lines may feel more reflective and poetic than spoken to the characters to whom they are ostensibly directed, the cast's consistent movement and groundedness redeems their hiccups.
A word to the wise, there are a few moments that don't fit with the overall grounded nature of the story. Think of a more serious version of "Orange is the New Black" or "Girl Interrupted". Shires plays a masterfully unstable and manipulative alcoholic, but her monologues can often fall into a insular 'tell' rather than 'show.' Certain points in the play seemed ripped from formulaic movie dramas, rather than real life. It's the audacity -- in performance, script and production -- that keeps us watching.
