Review of Carrie Fisher's Solo Show

From the San Francisco Chronicle:

Wishful Drinking: Solo show. Written and performed by Carrie Fisher. Directed by Tony Taccone. (Through March 30. Berkeley Rep's Roda Theatre, 2015 Addison St., Berkeley. Two hours. Tickets: $16.50-$69. Call (510) 647-2949 or go to www.berkeleyrep.org).

It isn't every solo show that can boast a supporting cast that includes Debbie Reynolds, Eddie Fisher, George Lucas (all seated in the audience) and Paul Simon (on tape). Carrie Fisher's does.

Or did, at least - so help me, Obi Wan Kenobi - Tuesday when her "Wishful Drinking" opened at Berkeley Rep's Roda Theatre. And that's not all. The cast of characters in her autobiographical tale also features Elizabeth Taylor, Mike Todd, Connie Stevens, Sherlock Holmes and a Wookiee.

Welcome to the curious world of tabloid theater. Fisher (Carrie), daughter of crooner Fisher (Eddie) and movie star Reynolds, former stepdaughter of Taylor, Stevens and a host of others (on both sides), ex-wife of Simon and eternal Princess Leia, is just telling her life story - as honestly, sardonically, fetchingly, caustically and comically as she can. It isn't her fault that her childhood was the stuff of tabloid celebrity-sex-lives headlines, nor that she's been diagnosed as bipolar, which probably has a lot to do with her sex-and-drugs tabloid notoriety as an adult.

What she wants to do, she tells us, is take control of her life by framing her own narrative, as she's done in four semiautobiographical novels ("Postcards From the Edge" et al.). Because, she says, "If my life wasn't funny, it would just be true."

It's definitely funny. Fisher knows how to write wickedly comic material and, better still, how to deliver it. It's also quite brave, in the take-no-prisoners attitude she applies to herself and her family - a kind of beat-the-tabloids-at-their-own-game gambit. And presumably it's true, even the parts about her parents and the "Star Wars" director being in the opening-night audience. But it's a bit wearying as well. For all its bracing honesty, it isn't always apparent why we should care.

This is Fisher's second go-round with the show. "Drinking" had an extended run in Los Angeles just over a year ago. She's reworked it with Rep Artistic Director Tony Taccone for its Bay Area run, co-presented by Jonathan Reinis Productions. Taccone gives it a fairly sharp staging with an ever-changing backdrop of projections - family photos, tabloid headlines, album covers, "Star Wars" and other film clips and a comical selection of Princess Leia merchandise - and some flown-in surprises on Alexander V. Nichols' cleverly skewed living-room set. But the script still needs work.

Fisher sings, just a bit, in her surprisingly low register (a bit awkwardly miked). She tells funny stories about her parents - her mother's bad marriages and her father's sex life and face-lifts - her two husbands, daughter, acting school exercises and the director who cast her in "Star Wars" and "ruined my life." She smokes and swigs cola. She also engages in too much hit-or-miss audience interaction, most of which misses.

An illustrated "Hollywood Inbreeding 101" lecture could have a better payoff, but much of its content is comically told. She's often hilarious, phrasing inappropriate intimacies or commentary with wickedly honed twists - about her pre- and post-marital romances with Simon, her marriage to a gay man, status as a gay icon or equating her brother's religious fervor with her own taking "masses of opiates religiously." Her account of having to vie for attention with celebrity parents at her own birth is a particular gem.

But "Drinking" grows somewhat wearing. Some segments are unfocused, with Fisher wandering almost aimlessly in casually rich outfits by Christina Wright and unexpectedly blond hair. The pacing begins to be repetitive, and the material about her bipolar disorder seems as oddly reticent as it is forthright. It's not only Fisher's bold humor that enlivens "Drinking" but the scenes she describes well enough that they become theatrical. The less-well-illustrated passages become just an evening of listening to a celebrity talk about herself.