Crazy Like That

“There’s a story in the show about getting an abortion from a
married guy. It’s not the best choice I’ve ever made—not the
abortion, but fucking a married guy without a condom.”

So mused Storm Large during an interview about her new show at
Portland Center Stage (PCS), Crazy Enough. Phrases like this
emerge fully formed from Large—as though there’s a deranged
little playwright constantly at work inside her head, scribbling lines
that balance obscenity, insight, and a healthy indifference to what you
might think of her.

It’s easy to understand why Portland Center Stage’s artistic
director, Chris Coleman, approached Large to create a one-woman show:
She’s hot, funny, charismatic, talented, and well-spoken (if we define
“well” broadly enough to encompass an unusually pointed way with an
F-bomb). A rock singer who moved up from San Francisco in 2002 and soon
had a popular weekly cabaret act with backing band the Balls, she has
the distinction of having appeared both on reality television (Rock
Star: Supernova) and in a mainstage musical (Sally Bowles in PCS’
Cabaret).

It’s a circuitous route toward respectability (if that’s what
writing and performing one’s own autobiography at Oregon’s largest
regional theater implies), but Large’s moment has come, with tickets to
Crazy Enough selling fast to her loyal fanbase, which is newly
bolstered by PCS subscribers eager to bask in the grit and authenticity
promised by a gorgeous, six-foot tall,
kinda-scary-but-weirdly-inspirational glamazon.

Crazy Enough, written by Large and directed by Coleman,
hinges on Large’s lifelong preoccupation with her own mental health.
Frequent suicide attempts saw Large’s mother in and out of mental
institutions—and when Large was a kid, she was informed that her
mother’s condition was hereditary. Crazy Enough guides us
through a life lived in the shadow of imminent insanity, from early
experimentation with sex and drugs, through a struggle with heroin
addiction, a career in music, a few epiphanies, and a dash of
redemption.

Like any memoir, the story here is secondary to the way in which it
is told—an interesting life does not guarantee interesting art.
Autobiography is fraught with the danger of self-mythologization,
requiring a performer to sidestep self-indulgence while maintaining
narrative momentum. Suffice to say that there is little sidestepping in
Crazy Enough, and little subtlety, either—Coleman is not
exactly known for his light directorial hand, and the decision to
dramatize certain scenes compromises the work as a whole.

When Large is simply telling us her story, in language that’s funny
and direct and insightful, it’s an incredibly effective work from an
uncannily charismatic and generous performer. When Large is
showing us her story—when she’s adopting childlike tones
to impersonate herself as a kid, or writhing onstage to illustrate the
grips of a heroin addiction—Crazy Enough rings false.
Music alone would have lent sufficient dramatic ballast to the
production—Large’s strength as a singer is her ability to find
the emotional core of any song, no matter how cheesy or familiar, and
the songs included here generally work well to that end. The dramatic
reenactments that pepper Crazy Enough, though, are simply
awkward, creating a rift between Storm-the-storyteller and
Storm-the-actor, and introducing an element of theatricality that’s
particularly jarring in a show predicated on frankness.

With tougher editing—most of the last act could go—and a
tighter rein on Coleman’s jazz hands, Crazy Enough could be a
stellar musical monologue. As it stands, it’s a flawed show made all
the more frustrating by how good it could have been.