Finding anguish, humor peeking in on slumber party

By Lisa Bornstein, Rocky Mountain News (Contact)

Friday, January 25, 2008

Barbara Gehring, left, and Linda Klein recall the joy and angst of young girls in Girls Only.

Barbara Gehring and Linda Klein are sitting on a twin bed in their underwear, munching snacks and leafing through fashion magazines, when a voice comes from offstage:

"Hey, girls, keep it down in there!"

Good luck.

Girls Only, a comedy and improv show by Klein and Gehring, two-thirds of the troupe A.C.E., is a raucously funny show that, with its women-only audience, takes on the feel of 3 a.m. at a slumber party, when the levitation games are finished and guards are dropped.

The show begins in a conversational mode, but there is nothing accidental about it. Showing its A.C.E. DNA, Girls Only is a thoroughly thought-out, polished affair. It stemmed from Gehring and Klein finding their childhood diaries, and when they read aloud from them onstage, it's a side-splitting moment. Establishing the themes of their childhoods, Gehring has a proper book with lock and key; Klein has spiral notebooks.

Much of their youthful examinations reveal how girls are influenced by outside sources but also try to train themselves in the tropes of romance. At 10, Gehring writes, "Can I last a weekend without my lover, Douglas E. Werner?"

There's real pain, the type any girl can understand, buried in the laughter, and almost any woman will find something with which to identify.

Another A.C.E. signature is the use of many media and styles in a single production. Here, women's history is told through shadow puppets (including an inspired beheading). Short films provide time for costume changes and are clever in their own right. Fanfare for the Common Women is told on a pad of paper, a la the Subterranean Homesick Blues video. By the time events crescendo with a meticulously choreographed pantyhose ballet, serious bonding has occurred.

All this lunacy takes place in a girl's bedroom of documentary realism (designed by Tina Anderson), evoking memories with its French Regency bedroom suite, the board games and clothes piled under the bed, and the horse calendar on the wall. There's just one thing missing - a nod to the women in the audience who may have dreamed of girls, not boys, in their youth.

It's too bad this is for women only - while the camaraderie is magical, it would be nice to see if men would turn out for a male-only show. They could stand to learn a little.

Girls Only

* Grade: A-

* When and where: 8 p.m. Thursdays through Saturdays and Feb. 19 and 26, 2 p.m. Sundays, through March 2, Avenue Theater, 417 E. 17th Ave.

* Cost: $20

* Information: 303-321-5925