Comments (0) Best Ensemble - 2009

Ambar Aranaga, Erynn Dalton, Monica Garcia, and Phyllis Spear for Claire Chafee's Why We Have a Body

Why We Have a Body is a zany impressionistic play that ought to be monstrous fun for the actresses who tackle it. And indeed, the actresses of the now-deceased Sol Theatre seemed to be enjoying themselves last summer as they juggled Claire Chafee's endless witticisms with her bottomless reflections on the natures of gender and fate. Ambar Aranaga, Erynn Dalton, Monica Garcia, and Phyllis Spear were fast-moving and quick-thinking, tearing through Chafee's script in an athletic way that somehow suggested they were trying to achieve liftoff. Momentum was nurtured and sustained, from Aranaga's lusty portrayal of a quirky, incurably violent, and gun-toting history buff to Spear's infinitely dour turn as her mother, boating in reflective solitude down some primeval canal in the Yucatan. It really was like juggling: a mass of words and ideas kept afloat by nothing but sheer enthusiasm, losing not a single watt of its energy as it passed from actress to actress. Why We Have a Body featured the kind of punch-drunk interplay that comes around only every few seasons, and we'll probably have a good long wait before we see its like again.

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