My overall impression
In If Water Were Present, It Would Be Called Drowning, Betsy Moore walks barefoot in a geometric pattern on the OCD-friendly decorated stage with children’s toys and chairs perfectly lining the sides. She carries a pink parasol that she’d love to stick in the nearest comparably-sized fruity cocktail, while a narrator reads off a litany of shopping list items, thoughts, and every social rule that has been hammered into her brain since birth. Her face caked in white powder and doll makeup, she’s a woman passed the verge of a nervous breakdown. Her trenchcoat reveals an apron that continues to a striptease down to her lingerie, as she shares with the audience her inability to cope with motherhood and wifedom in her tract suburb. She shares all of her wildest fantasies that include infanticide while her business-suited, plastic husband (Paul Tucci) sometimes chimes in with generic interest about her day via lip-syncing to voice-over. In the background, a screen displays a deteriorating kitchen over the course of the play. Moore sturdily carries John Sinner’s surreal one-person show depicting this deteriorating woman without going into complete distancing histrionics. This reviewer saw an encore performance that was part of the 2012 Hollywood Fringe Festival.
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