If you’ve ever wondered how busy bartenders juggle all those orders while trying to deal with unsavory customers like frat boys, stumbling drunk girls, and the sad sack regular who constantly regales everyone with his woes, then go see Last Call now playing at the IRT Theater. The latest from terraNOVA Collective, Last Call is written and performed by Terri Girvin, comedian, actress, and seasoned bartender. The one-woman show follows Terri over the course of one night as she works a shift in a busy Lower East Side bar while trying to avoid calls from her eccentric and soon-to-be homeless mother.
Tony Award-nominated director Michael Leeds, sound designer Phil Palazzolo, and lighting designer Jason Fok do a good job recreating a buzzing bar on a Saturday night with Terri voicing a variety of characters through recordings, including her own mother, Gwen. Gwen is a bit of a lost soul; a divorced dreamer for whom life means to be constantly in pursuit of creativity and fun or else it’s not worth living. Gwen’s life also happens to be a chaotic mess, which does not jive with Terri’s natural orderliness, proven by her extensive explanations of where everything goes in her bar. When Gwen plans to move across the country from California to live with her daughter in her studio apartment in New York, Terri tries to find a way to tactfully tell her mother this would be the worst idea ever.
Using flashbacks of conversations between the two and humorous anecdotes (like the time when Terri and her three brothers formed a singing group and auditioned for The Ed Sullivan Show), Terri lays the groundwork of her background and her mother’s character and how that affected her growing up. It’s clear Terri and her siblings find their mother burdensome and annoying. Indeed, Terri takes many opportunities to mock Gwen despite her own feelings of guilt at not being there for her mother. She juxtaposes this family drama with the drama of a night at a busy bar, skillfully performing every type of interaction a bartender might have in one night. From cutting people off to explaining how irritating it is when people wave their money to get your attention, Terri brings to life an entire microcosm of New York.
Terri forms her own community within the bar, greeting her regulars with warmth and describing them with affection, even the ones she finds irritating. She forms a kind of kinship with these people, perhaps even stemming from her mother’s inability to keep her own family together. Because if there’s one thing Terri can rely on, it’s that people like to drink and her customers will always be there to warm her bar.
