Porn Star is the story of two sisters from Elbow, Saskatchewan. One is leaving her tiny, judgmental town – and her large, judgmental mother – for the bright lights of San Francisco, thanks to an accidental amateur porn career. The other is trying to leave Hell for Heaven. So, basically, the same thing. Porn Star is a topical comedy (sometimes a little too topical) that deals with both raunch and heart, and is surprisingly philosophical for a show with such a title. Most importantly, it is funny. Very, very funny.
Esther (Amy Lee) finds out that she has been nominated for an amateur actress award – in porn. She (a generally repressed, but secretly sexy-librarian type) is completely bewildered until she remembers an old lover who used to tape them. It’s found its way to the Internet, and Esther’s shocked with what she sees, but also finds a new sense of self and liberation. Sweet and eager to please others, she is just happy to have been nominated for an award. She heads to San Francisco with hopes of seeing the guy again, wanting to retreat into a fantasy narrative. Meanwhile, sad Kate (Heather Marie Annis) an angelic-looking 14-year-old, seems very out of place as she speaks to us mournfully from Hell, where monkeys play banjos off-key and the Devil can shape-shift into whatever hilariously inappropriate thing he wants to. As her death stems from teen pregnancy and suicide, her fundamentalist mother Sharon (Lynne Griffin), the spiritual heir of the Tea Party, who heads the last committee of Sarah Palin devotees, mostly refuses to speak of her, focusing on “good” child Esther. She is in for a surprise. Rounding out the cast is Sarah Mennell as Clarice, a female Dan Savage-type sex columnist who takes it upon herself to be Esther’s Henry Higgins of the world of sex, porn, lesbianism, contracts and fame. Clarice is portrayed initially as what seems like a potential antagonist, sly and ready to pounce on Esther, so it’s refreshing to see this not come to pass.
It’s not surprising, but very nice, that Chris Craddock’s engaging script is relentlessly sex-positive. Sharon is treated significantly less charitably – for good reason, as she is a Bible-beating right-wing hypocrite – but she’s the weakest part of the show, character-wise. I found myself wishing for more nuance, a little more exploration of that sadness behind her eyes, rather than more Tea Party jokes. This isn’t to say that the jokes aren’t funny or deserved; they are both. Some shots just seem a bit cheap when you’re preaching to the choir.
Craddock gets tons of mileage out of awkward situations and a sweet-yet-salty sensibility. There’s also lots of great imagery, particularly in the sections describing Hell and Heaven in the afterlife. Initially, I was surprised to see Craddock embracing what seems to be a Christian afterlife theology; however, this is soon revealed to be a much more sophisticated and multifaceted sense of theology and spirituality, as we are left with the strong sense that our afterlife, or lack thereof, is tied very tightly to what we believe in life – it doesn’t matter what we do, as long as it’s not against our personal code of religion or ethics. We’re not led to believe that Esther will wind up in Hell for her budding porn career, for example.
The actors are uniformly excellent; Lee plays a credible naïf in the big city, and Annis radiates a damaged sweetness with an edge of purpose. Griffin is suitable pompous and flustered, and Mennell is particularly magnetic; she’s got a gleam in her eye that’s both kind and predatory, which is why I didn’t initially trust her character. It’s wonderful to see a play with all of its parts as strong roles for women. I’d say this play would be a boon to high school drama departments, but…uh…maybe universities.
Hopefully, nobody takes the moral from this that, if you tape your girlfriend having sex and put it on the Internet, she’s wind up rich, famous and happy. Rather, as the two main narratives connect particularly well in a thematic way, (though they also do in terms of a touching plot), I hope the audience takes away that Porn Star is all about answering the call. That life is what you make it, based on the path you decide to follow, and that it does get better if you find it within yourself to take charge of your destiny and escape.
-Ilana
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