Asking For It

Description
**** [FOUR STARS] Bernadette O’Connell, the lead character in Joanna Rush's one-woman show "Asking for It," has an initial naïveté that pulls audiences in. The 17-year-old’s desperate dash from the New Jersey suburbs eventually leads her to the reflected glory of '70s Broadway, with old-school Radio City holiday productions introducing her to the stage life she’s always dreamed of. Romance blooms with a pit musician, and roles in "A Chorus Line" and the infamous sex musical "Let My People Come" follow. But her tenacious Irish Catholic guilt leaves Bernadette ill-equipped to deal with unwanted advances and sexual assaults; in recurring interior monologues, she grapples with the question of whether she was somehow responsible for them. Rush nimbly moves the character from raw, claustrophobic trauma to tender, sometimes comedic epiphanies, and her well-honed song-and-dance chops infuse the proceedings with an unpredictable spontaneity. Some of the beats making up Bernadette’s eventual embrace of her own sexuality and spirituality feel a little heavy-handed, but Rush sprinkles in enough wary skepticism and genuine energy to make "Asking for It" a happy surprise.--Evan Narcisse, Freelance Writer