THE LARGEST ELIZABETH IN THE WORLD
Playwright Stephen Gregg’s The Largest Elizabeth in the World is a hilarious absurdist fantasy about a teenage girl who grows to be 50 feet tall. Gregg, who also penned Griffin’s successful Sex Lives of Superheroes, produced last season, displays a remarkable talent for merging the ridiculous and the mundane. He creates characters with a wealth of quirks and puts them in bizarre situations, yet manages to ground his plays in a basic honesty about human nature. The Largest Elizabeth in the World is a kind of teen-oriented “Woody Allen meets Edward Scissorhands.”
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Gregg seems to have taken the idea for the show from the Roches song of the same name. In the song, “Elizabeth” refers to a prissy schmuck; the opening line is “Don’t you sometimes feel like the largest Elizabeth in the world? / Usually at a time when the boy is indifferent to the girl.” Gregg translates “largest Elizabeth” literally, and sticks with the song’s major theme: “Wouldn’t you like to feel like yourself after suffering so many years?”
Dawn-Christian Maxey is superb as Amanda, the nasty sister. A toned-down Sandra Bernhardt, she has a menacing voice and lust for torment that would make her right at home in the Addams family. Laurel Holloman as Elizabeth is a completely believable teenager, a good girl who’s trying to discover her own voice. The nuances of her portrayal–more like film than stage acting–emphasize her otherness in a world of broadly played characters. G. Scott Thomas and Debra Rich turn in strong performances as the aggravating father and wacky neighbor, who strike up an oddly touching romance over candy corn. Wayne E. Pyle is a bit one-dimensional as Joseph, Elizabeth’s nerdy love interest, but as the play gets wilder Pyle seems to find his place, and by his earnest final moments he’s extremely winning.
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