Before the play even begins, Girl You Know It’s True advertises its ambitions to psych us out. Its title comes from a hit single by the infamous lip-synching ’80s duo Milli Vanilli, and at the very top of the script and the program, playwright Bixby Elliot warns the world, “Note: Don’t Trust This Play.” Girl is told in interspersed scenes from two parallel plots: the made-up one about the playwright, and the true history of Milli Vanilli. But this mildly meta-theatrical comedy about a frustrated, white, gay playwright who finds sudden success when he starts submitting his work as other people—a heterosexual French Korean man, an African American lesbian in a wheelchair—contains a few verifiable truths.
In fact, the zany plot about the playwright (also named Bixby) is often less strange and compelling than Girl‘s inclusion of real-life imposters: Milli Vanilli’s rise from obscure Munich lip-synch act to international pop swindle, jazz bandleader Billy Lee (born Dorothy) Tipton’s life passing as a man (which was so successful, she even fooled a string of female lovers, one of whom lived with Tipton for seven years), the 19th-century cobbler’s daughter who briefly convinced British dignitaries that she was a princess from an island in the Indian Ocean, and so on. These historical phantoms appear as cautionary tales for Bixby as he negotiates the fame and consequences of his elaborate hoax.
Director Ed Hawkins seems most comfortable when Girl is humming along at farce-level speed. He and his actors revel in the comedy and appear to just tolerate the play’s earnest patches as the cost of doing business. In this, they’re simply following the script’s lead, which liberally doles out the one-liners (when Bixby reveals a $500 check from one theater, his lover deadpans: “Nice. We can use this to get Cujo that echocardiogram test for his heart murmur”), but whose serious dialogue reads like a chore (“I don’t want to talk about your ridiculous plays—I want to talk about something real—our relationship“). It ends with a whimper, as Bixby tells his lover all he really needs is someone “to believe in me.”
Sincerity doesn’t become Girl. Happily for everyone, it doesn’t idle there for long and gives its actors plenty of opportunity for mugging—especially Rebecca M. Davis, as the actor Bixby hires as his African American front, whose large and flexible face was born to mug. As Milli Vanilli, actors Andrew Lee Creech and Corey Spruill find a surprising vulnerability and sadness in the middle of their frenetic fake-out (which, for the record, was masterminded by a scheming record producer). And as the playwright Bixby, Ian Bell threads the needle between heartfelt and wacky, finding himself—like his avatars Milli Vanilli—exhilarated and apprehensive about his heist while having to keep a poker face.
“I would do just about fucking anything to get someone to fucking notice me,” he growls towards the beginning of Girl. And by the end, it’s not clear whether he—or any of his fellow imposters—would have done anything differently. When it comes to show business, lying has its benefits. 
