Shut Up and Dance

Stella Valente-Wilkins is a Hollywood hyphenate: comedienne-dancer-yogini-writer-actress-raconteur. And all these Stellas meld into a delicious solo performance of coming-of-age stories, at turns both wonderfully funny and sad, told in her well-modulated Queens NY accent as girl-from-the-'hood. She riffs on family, romance, fate, slackers & goombahs. This lithe Italian-American beauty moves about the stage effortlessly on a lovely pair of dancer's legs (she taught at Arthur Murray) and pushes plywood cubes into the shape of an Argentinian café, hospital waiting room, bedroom, and automobile (the cubes could use a bit less choreography.) The twists and turns of her life are often riotously funny and sometimes a little haunting. And there is r... full review