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Elements of Style

nytheatre.com review by Joe LaRue
August 15, 2005

One of many priceless moments in Wendy Weiner's new one-woman show Elements of Style comes when, as uptight copy editor Winnifred, she receives an email riddled with text message shorthand. Her reaction to the use of the letter "U" in place of "you" is akin to being stabbed in the heart. The missive ends with the grandest of all punctuation sins: the emoticon. Winnifred practically spits her denouncement of it as "a vile misuse of the colon and closed parenthesis." She asks, "did Shakespeare need to end his monologues with a smiley face so we would know what he was thinking?"Elements of Style is filled with this type of Eats, Shoots and Leaves punctuation humor, while mixing in themes of office politics and mother-daughter relationships. Weiner embodies several nicely drawn characters that populate the offices of Conde-Nast's "Glamorous Magazine." In a frenzy, the main character, Winnifred, has fired her entire copy-editing staff and we, the audience, are interviewees to be replacements. She shows us the magazine's "free table," overflowing with products that various companies have sent, desperate to receive press coverage. Winnifred looks at us squarely and in a dreadfully serious tone informs us that, "if hired, you may never have to buy shampoo again."One of my favorite parts of the "interview" process includes calling a hapless audience member up to the stage to correct the punctuation of several sentences on a white board. Winnifred stands directly behind the poor woman, barely able to contain her horror at misplaced commas.Weiner's performance is relaxed and nuanced—especially when playing the part of Winnifred's younger daughter, who has rebelled against her mother by becoming a spoken word poet. As the daughter, she stands on a stack of her mother's magazines and delivers her poem, “I am not your hyphen,” lashing out against her mother in a perfect parody of heightened “def poet” voice and gesture.The writing is especially strong, (who could expect less from Weiner, who worked as a copy editor for 10 years?) and coupled with such an engaging performance, Elements of Style is the perfect show not only for copy editors, but for anyone who has ever confused “its” with “it’s,” so, just about everyone.