FringeNYC 2013: Me Love Me
Tuck, a libertine, struggling actor with a coke-addiction, learns he has a biological clone. The two men quickly embark upon a tear of debauchery and clone sex, leaving his (their?) girlfriend to pick up the pieces. From Hollywood, CA.
Show details/ticketing at FringeNYCReview by Steven Cherry · August 10, 2013
A three-person play offers three potential two-person relationships: A+B, B+C, and A+C. But what if A=C?
In Me Love Me, Tuck and Gemma are a couple of actors in Los Angeles, and are a couple, for better and for worse. Tuck is, in the words of a program note, a delusional narcissist, but Gemma is the sort of selfless, loving partner who can forgive the worst in him or at least look past it to find the good. Tuck, for his part, loves her enough to keep his weaknesses—especially for cocaine—mostly in check, for her sake if not for his.
Then his clone enters his life.
It seems an absurd device, and indeed, Gemma will point that out more than once—“and they don’t even look alike!”—but it’s also an effective one for personifying selfishness and self-love and for exploring such questions as, does he love her enough? and, does she (and, in the case of the clone, he) love him too much?
Tuck’s drug use inevitably descends into self- and relationship-destruction (with Gemma, but not with his clone—there’s no breaking up with oneself, though self-loathing is, again, effectively portrayed through the device).
The play’s emotional heart—and its touch of true genius—comes in the form of a one-woman show-within-the-show performance by Gemma that brilliantly reveals the backstory of her and Tuck’s relationship as well as her conflicted feelings for him and her own struggle with a Xanax dependency. There are a hundred ways this scene could have blown up but playwright Brandon Baruch wove a daring path through the landmines.
Me Love Me is not without some rough spots. The plot strains the suspension of disbelief somewhat beyond its legitimate allowances, and one or two silent moments slide from pregnant to awkward pauses.
The acting is mainly superb, especially Gemma’s (Lizzie Adelman) audacious monologue, Tuck’s (Benjamin Durham) overdose scene, and the clone’s (Sto Strouss) seamless transitions between being 4 and 28 years old emotionally, and between robotic literalism and heartfelt expressions of that most human of emotions, love.
Preview: Interviews with Artists from Me Love Me
We're asking artists from each show to answer questions about themselves and their work to help our readers get a detailed advance picture of the festival:
The Folks Back Home · Brandon Baruch (Writer)
- When did you decide to become a writer, and who or what inspired you to make that choice?
I started writing in college because it seemed like the thing to do. I didn't really find my voice until a couple of years later when I started spearheading devised theater pieces and collaborative ensemble plays. - Who are your role models as a writer?
I love Edward Albee for his ability to take an absurd, heightened situation and then approach it with absolute seriousness. I also love Charles Busch, who writes absolutely ridiculous plays which always have a lot of heart. - Do you ever write about the people you grew up with (family, friends)?
My last few plays were originally conceived out of spite, for what it's worth. I wrote an anti-God musical after my boyfriend dumped me for being an atheist. "Me Love Me" was inspired by a former collaborator with a cocaine addiction who tried to rape me. (It wasn't traumatizing, but it was infuriating.) - Groucho, Chico, Harpo, or Zeppo?
Groucho. I love a bon mot. - If grandma left you ten million dollars that you had to spend only on theatrical endeavors, how would you use the money?
I would create so many mediocre theater productions and mount them in giant theaters without bothering to workshop them. Just like half the theatrical trust-fund babies in Hollywood.
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