The F*cking World According To Molly
nytheatre.com review by Richard Hinojosa
August 19, 2011
Andrea Alton, aka Molly "Equality" Dykeman, arrives at the New York International Fringe Festival with the world premiere of a romping, good time performance that exposes Molly’s brashest along with a little of her softest sides.
Alton is a staple of the GLBT community with her brazen, pill-popping and somewhat ignorant standup comedy character, who is a mullet-headed security guard by day and a poet by night. Alton has played comedy clubs all around the city but with this show she attempts to dig a little deeper and find out what makes Molly tick. The premise here is that Molly is holding her first professional poetry reading. The subjects of her “po`ems” are for the most part what pisses her off and sex. But after all, she only “got into poetry to get laid.” There’s the recurring one that always starts with “I wanna stick my face in your vah`giiiiiii na” and is set on various forms of public transportation. There’s also the poem about her mullet that she forgot to write. Molly’s thick Brooklyn accent and her oddly elongated vowels are perfect for poetry reading. But this show is not about the poetry, it’s about Molly’s love life. She hits on every chick see can see in the first few rows but also hints at her deeper desire to find love.
Alton’s performance is very funny. She is at home on stage and feels at ease to riff on all sorts of things from hot girls in the audience to loud drips backstage. Molly’s character is extremely outrageous though a bit hard to take at time mostly because she’s so unreal. So it is nice to see Alton, and her director Mark Finley, try to unearth something more solid for the audience to grab on to. Alton’s energy, whether she’s doing her version of some Michael Jackson choreography or belting out a poem titled "I don’t give a fucking shit," is high wattage and in between Percocets and dirty poems there are some moments of lucidity.
Alton had me right there with her for most of the show, but the idea of Molly sort of peters out like an SNL sketch by the end. Molly’s impending mullet and larger-than-life jump suit complete with an orange reflective vest are well dreamt up by her costume designer Anthony Catanzaro. There is a note on the program that this show is meant for mature audiences but I think that’s pretty much implied in the title.
The F*cking World According to Molly is for audiences looking for a laugh riot. Molly is good for a whole lot of laughs. It can be tough to transfer a character from standup to theater but I think Alton makes a valiant effort here and with maybe a little more delving into who Molly really is this show could turn out to be a force in fringe theater.
