What I liked
First of all, the theater (The Cat’s Cradle) was amazing. It felt intimate and well loved but polished and professional. Warm and full of possibility.
As for the rest of the show, there was very little I did not like. This is a show that could stand on its own in any room and know it earned its place. I particularly loved the moments McDonnell embodied the character of Bea—her adoptive grandmother—switching seamlessly in and out of character, and thus in and out of a place of emotional wound and emotional healer. Similarly, her performance as her younger self, her mother, and her grandmother around the kitchen table was arresting and transportive, and I cannot tell you how beautifully and deftly Brianna juggled pain, reality, imagination, and-most importantly-humor. Not just in those moments, but in the entire show.
The moment at the end of her performance of Poor Unfortunate Souls set off the waterworks for me, as well as when she sat amongst the audience in the chair under a classic spotlight, embodying Bea as she and Brianna took in a show in the front row, and turned to her younger self to make her promise to live a big, bold, brilliant life-no matter what people said she fit into.
The entire room was in pieces.
Overall, this show was an inspiring and refreshing window into the fatphobia that has shaped a brilliant talent’s life, but handled with a humor, resilience, and freshness that sets it apart from the cultural conversation and launches it into its own realm where nobody is doing it like Brianna McDonnell.
What I didn't like
The only thing that sticks out to me as slightly out of place is the viewing of the Shopping While Fat video. I feel like Brianna might have been able to recreate the video with highlighting the important bits performed again, or perhaps removed the audio to create a soundtrack she could interact with anew. But this is a knit picky critique, and I can say without question I would heartily endorse this show without hesitation.
My overall impression
This show was an innovative, unflinching, soul-bearing and deeply relatable remembering of a lifetime spent in a body first called “too big” by young cousins, then-generously and authentically-the ways the refrain reverberated throughout one young woman’s years. While one might be tempted to read the above and decide they would be witnessing a theatrical delve into an individual’s life and not a show that had anything to do with them, Big with a B cuts straight through the rind of many unique lives and leaves the audience collectively staring at the same pulpy fear of each heart in the room-the question of being “too” something to love, and the courage to overcome.
