NOHO ARTS DISTRICT REVIEW OF IT’S PERSONAL: LOS ANGELES

It's Personal: Los Angeles

Article by Samantha Simmonds-Ronceros

What a way to start the Hollywood Fringe Festival! I was lucky enough to catch this show in preview and I have to tell you, it’s phenomenal.

Finding a slightly better or different way to riff on the one person sketch thing is a tough call, but “It’s Personal” has definitely cracked it. Each cast member writes and performs a short solo sketch around the theme of L.A. Simple enough I hear you cry, but while they perform their pieces, they are all actively doing something totally unrelated to their monologue at the same time…well, perhaps not totally unrelated, but at first it does appear to be random. Let me elaborate…A guy onstage, carried out but a couple of his cohorts, is tied rather believably to his chair…bound in fact. And as he inspiringly recounts his thematic L.A. experience he struggles to escape his bindings…brilliant!! We are distracted by his predicament and yet it also somehow focuses us his words and his performance. It adds something magical in fact.

Just as soon as the audience absorbs his effortlessly genius performance we are on to the next sketch and something just as unique and relatable and slightly weird unfolds…I will not go through each one…it would spoil it and you just have to see it for yourself.

Suffice it to say, everyone was absolutely brilliant. No matter what their piece was about, no matter how seeming completely disconnected their elaborate activity was to their soliloquy, by the end of their piece the connection seemed to make perfect sense, even when it didn’t…

I LOVED this show. The actors are hilarious, moving, brutally real and their stories refined, emotional, true and inspiring…You have to see “It’s Personal.” I know, I know, Fringe hasn’t even begun, you are still thinking about how you are going to get from one place to another in time to not be late etc, etc. Add this to your roster….believe me, you won’t regret it!!!