By the time he got around to smearing Dijon mustard on his chest, I was reminded of a line from Living with Betty: "It's like a vine has wrapped around my heart and choked my feelings." I couldn't have agreed more. Benton might as well have been talking about one-person shows themselves (from the misguided G. G. Allin tribute I was watching to her own, more eager-to-please offering), which increasingly seem to occupy a place in theater not unlike kudzu, a tenacious and rampant crawling vine that squeezes the life right out of more tender life forms. They're everywhere and they're all terrible!
Outside of fire-eating, writing and performing a solo show is the most unforgiving type of theater there is. The actor needs to be an engaging playwright, a charismatic performer, and a gifted mimic. If all these pieces aren't in place, the performer will go down in flames--so why does it seem like every single actor alive wants to put themselves through this potentially disastrous exercise?
The answer is "respect." There is plenty of commercial work for a certain sort of actor in this town. If they are blessed like Benton with conventional good looks and crisp diction, there is no end to the Microsoft industrials and Bon Marché print ads. It's a great way to pay the rent, sure, but nobody ever became an actor because they longed to smile brightly while demonstrating software. I'm willing to bet that Benton, like other actors before her, saw a one-person show as a shortcut to critical acclaim and peer admiration. Unfortunately, Living with Betty will bring her neither of these.
Set in 1966 on an Air Force base in Arizona, the play tells the story of Sally, an emotionally fragile young widow of a fighter pilot, who meets a sexy, free-spirited teacher named Betty at the school where she works. Missing romance and warmth in her life, she responds to the attention Betty lavishes on her, and the two young women become roommates. Soon, she begins to catch Betty in one lie after another, each becoming more and more fanciful until Sally is forced to admit that her friend is living in a completely fabricated reality.
As Sally, the main character and object of our sympathies, Benton lacks animation. Granted, she is playing a woman stricken with grief, but her choice of mannerisms for this poor woman looks like no choice at all. Laboriously, she telegraphs each new thought by pausing meaningfully, and if you look closely you can almost see her wheels grinding as she works her way through her Stanislavsky sense-memory exercises.
Betty, the charismatic liar who wreaks havoc on Sally's life, exhibits broader physicality and a fake Southern accent, but also fails to take shape as a believable character. The rest of the incidental characters all suffer from this same blurry quality. Directors John Longenbaugh and K. Brian Neel should have helped Benton bring these impressions to life by making more inventive and decisive physical and vocal choices.
Perhaps a more engaging and dynamic script could have helped her performance. The story, based on an episode in her mother's life, is interesting, but hardly worth the deadly- serious scrutiny given to it for an hour and 45 minutes. Okay, her mom had a loony roommate--so what? If she is trying to comment on the Vietnam War and the nature of truth itself, as she claims in the program, she has fallen far short of her goal.
Lots of little kids dream about being fighter pilots, but few of them get to climb into the cockpit. One-person shows are the same way. Every actor wants to do one, but hardly any have the stamina and talent to pull it off. Sadly, Living with Betty never really makes it off the ground.
