See it if Jenn Murray's performance is brilliant--pitch-perfect to the story of an Irish girl who never had a chance.
Don't see it if It's only in language--but the play leaves nothing to the imagination concerning sexual depravity and degradation.
See it if You want to see a powerful one woman show about a young girl growing up in Ireland under very hard conditions. Every movement had a meaning.
Don't see it if You will be upset by rape, violence, child abuse, and death. However, the storytelling is exquisite and draws you in from the beginning.
See it if You want to see a phenomenal performance. You want to experience a profound night of theater that will stay with you.
Don't see it if You have trouble with profanity or sexual explicitnesses You have difficulty with accents.
See it if you're interested in an unusual theatrical form where talented Jenn Murray portrays many characters describing events in complex language
Don't see it if violence is an issue. Although the events are described as opposed to acted out, the play is graphic & horrifying. It's also hard to follow
See it if you enjoy dark, harrowing one-woman shows
Don't see it if you are disturbed by sexual content
See it if Like Irish storytelling and provocative and difficult material
Don't see it if If you are looking for a sweet story and do not like story of abuse
See it if Want to see a fine actor take on a very difficult monologue. Have interest in the traumatic impacts of childhood & adolescent trauma.
Don't see it if You avoid references to sexual and physical abuse. Do not like monologues or small, very claustrophobic theatre spaces.
See it if you are looking to see a first rate performance by a gifted actor. The material is choppy, but she conveys EVERYTHING with emotional clarity
Don't see it if you don't enjoy non-linear storytelling, poetic speech structure, or stories involving rape/incest. It is a difficult story to watch.
"Critic's Pick!...Directed by Nicola Murphy on Irish Rep’s tiny second stage, Jenn Murray rides the current of the monologue like a river, navigating its rapids and eddies, and stretches of calm, with a deftness that easily brings the audience along. On a spare set by Chen-Wei Liao, abetted by Michael O’Connor’s lighting and underscored by Nathanael Brown’s subtle music and sound design, Murray slips in and out of a crowd of characters with near-total legibility."
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McBride's writing, however gorgeous, is densely constructed, a thicket of words that require time to sink in -- more time than a theatrical experience can spare. She once told The Guardian, that, upon reading James Joyce's Ulysses, she decided, "Everything I have written before is rubbish, and today is the beginning of something else." That turned out to be a Joycean stream-of-consciousness combined with a Beckettian austerity of vision. A Girl is a Half-Formed Thing is a piece of remarkable integrity, but it is a relentless, exhausting account of a loveless life.
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Far more profound is the extent to which she embodies each person the girl mentions, giving them life-like dimensions and, thus, indisputably justifying the entire adaptation's existence. Besides her incredible skill, the core of Murray's remarkable performance (or performances) is her bravery, which the equally fearless writing requires...
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"This is one of those theatrical experiences not to be missed, where everything falls into place. And like Halley’s Comet, it is here for a brief moment and then gone with only the memory of the light and the heart-stopping encounter."
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