The Play
Where you can see great women comics who should have netflix or HBO specials. Here is Sue Costello.
But let’s start with a closer look at Sue Costello: Costello, a brilliant comedian and actor who was briefly a TV star in a short-lived sitcom on Fox in the late 1990s, has emerged from the roller-coaster ride of her life in blue-collar Dorchester and the turmoil of a combustible Hollywood career with a stunning first-person play about her journey. I saw a preview of her show, “#IamSueCostello,” a while ago in New York, and, for once , the hoariest clichés of rave reviews – “I laughed! I cried!” – actually apply to this show.
What’s especially strinking about that show is that it isn’t simply a Mike Birbiglia-style monologue about her life or a series of quick impressions, but an actual touching and funny solo play about her life in which she’s playing herself at different periods in her life. On stage, she converses in her solo act with real-life characters we can’t see but whose presence is as real and riveting as hers.
Local Boston papers aren’t simply championing a home-town girl but heralding a major comedic and playwriting talent.
At the risk of seeming excessive in praise of Costello, her one-person show is the best combination of genuine poignancy and rollicking humor since the pioneering stage work of Lily Tomlin and early Whoopi Goldberg. She could easily have done a great one-woman show filled with the sort of amazing and hilarious stories of her life she told Marc Maron on a podcast after she reemerged into the spotlight with a supporting role as a feisty Southie in the movie “The Fighter.” Instead, she has created a play that is told through scenes, re-enacted by an actress with extraordinary range.
http://www.youtube.com/embed/i1X9LIpEwfQ?wmode=opaque&enablejsapi=1
