New York City is full of struggling actors who keep the faith that their big break, their moment in the spotlight, is just around the corner. Billy Hipkins, writer and star of For the Benefit of Miss Jennie Gourlay, knows more than anyone that these moments can take a very long time to come, if they ever do, and while waiting he has found a kindred spirit in the titular actress as he mirrors her life and experiences against his own.

Hipkins explains to us that Miss Gourlay was to make her star debut in Ford's Theatre on April 15, 1865. However, with the assassination of President Lincoln the night before, the theater was closed indefinitely and Gourlay's chance to shine was passed over. His fascination with the "what-ifs" of Gourlay's life brings Hipkins to stack his own career shortcomings against the unfortunate actress's, hoping to find that there was a light at the end of her tunnel.

As the actor recounts his early research of Miss Gourlay, going back and forth between his findings and his own theatrical beginnings, he displays a knack for portraying various types of characters in both body and in voice. With biting sass and snarky asides, Hipkins recounts with hilarious self-deprecation what was essentially the brief career of a failed actor, culminating with a side-splitting reenactment of his first -- and only -- performance on a Broadway stage. With such trained and true comic timing, anyone in the audience will wonder how this man hasn't found the success he's dreamed of.

Hipkins performs his one-man show in a blackbox theater that holds 73 seats and presents a simple set of a wooden folding chair and an easel holding multiple placards, each showing a different image that Hipkins reveals at their appropriate times. It is a performance that relies on pitch perfect timing and delivery, and Hipkins knows this, has rehearsed it, and he does not falter.

The writing is done so much to Hipkins's strengths as a performer that it may seem that he is simply winging it onstage rather than putting on a meticulously written and rehearsed script. For a 70-minute show with no intermission to break up the action, time flies by in the theater. Very few enter the space knowing who this Miss Gourlay was, and perhaps being unfamiliar with Hipkins as well, but every audience will leave all the wiser in both areas. It certainly beats a tour of a history museum.

For the Benefit of Miss Jennie Gourlay gives us two stories in which a person's dreams for the stage are shifted due to circumstances outside their control, but with a host of laughs along the way as well. Through his research of Miss Gourlay and his own pursuit of stardom, Billy Hipkins shows us that although your life may not go as you planned it, there is still hope for a happy ending.