A Comedy about Suicide / the Silly Side of the Sex Industry
Imagine a black stage, bleak light, a blacker and bleaker litter of empty Jim Beams and Bellows. Imagine lugubrious neo-gypsy dixieland in the background. Center stage, imagine a washtub. Inside said washtub, a razor, pills, a .357 magnum--even a rooftop perfect for swan dive--and a wiry body full of strife and vulnerability but also oddly full life, a body on the cusp of ending that life.
Penny Pollak's "No Traveler: a comedy about suicide" is the first of 2 one-woman shows playing a NYC preview run before performances at the 
Edinburgh Fringe Festival next month. As its subtitle suggests, "No Traveler" treats its dark subject matter with a sensibility that makes you smile, but out of pity and empathy rather than cynicism or snark. And that's refreshing.
Pollak navigates her cast of troubled souls who are unified by the question "Why live?" showcasing everything from silent film mime-choreography to physical comedy. A body-possession vignette will have you convinced there are at least two beings on stage. A memorable 45-second purging scene is both hilarious and, by the sound of it, clearly well researched. At other times Pollak contorts, glued inexplicably to her washtub, riding it like a galloping steed, surfing it, falling ass-backwards out of it into cold, hard, shitty reality.
Her monologues debate self-slaughter in all its philosophical iterations, from the brightly burning life trope ("Rockstars drink, they party, and they die young. Sounds great!") to solipsistic alienation ("Everyone wants to die! Nobody cares about you! Why should you care about them?").
So yes, Pollak is not afraid to wildly wield her body. Or her soul, for that matter. But she is at her strongest when she pulls everything inside and wields an understated intensity. Case in point, and arguably the show's most gripping moment: Pollak sits huddled on her washtub staring dead into the audience, a .357 inspecting her left temple, and whispers "Give me one reason not to do this, right now." The response arrives via omniscient silence (a wise choice by the writer, given that any verbalized answer would be unavoidably insufficient), and Pollak lowers the gun. "Oh. Well. That's a pretty good reason."
Ultimately, "No Traveler" leaves you wondering what you might say if you killed yourself then got a chance to share a little hindsight with before-dead you. Pollak's answer ain't the coddling, twee, life-affirming mantra you might expect from a less nuanced show. It is instead a lurching, beseeching, equivocal and satisfyingly open-ended "STOP!"
If Pollak's performance gets to you through minimalism and soul-effacing honesty, Scout Durwood's "Hi, How Can I Help You?" will dizzy you with a dizzying onslaught of dizzying eye and sound candy. Thematically about "the silly side of the sex industry," Durwood's show draws on her background in burlesque to pull off a one-woman vaudeville. There's live looping, a ukulele, tambourine, roller blades, a hula hoop, roller-blades-and-a-hula-hoop, lingerie, soulful crooning, spot-on accents ranging from valley girl to cutesy cockney to Tickle Me Elmo, and even a series of pre-recorded videos where Durwood plays a slam of men who employ the services of the Enchanted Paddle sex house.
The best part is how the Enchanted Paddle's working girls constantly try--and impossibly fail--to rationalize their participation in the sex industry. In one scene, a character repeatedly attempts to explain, only to be endlessly interrupted by calls from prospective clients:
"So, okay, I'm willing to tolerate a certain amount of social stigma to work in an industry that is fun and--Hi, how can I help you?"
"...People say I'm a bad person, but if this is how I'm gonna to pay for my children to have Blackberries and go to college--Hi, Enchanted Padd--"
"...It's not sex. It's never about sex…what we do is like making love, except harder--Hi..."
The show also hints at the industry's recent turn for the worse during the recession, as when Durwood's endearingly funny Bronx-Italian madame laments, "It was catty, it was bitchy, but it wasn't like this."
And that's the point. Because "Hi, How Can I Help You?" for all its surface farce and pomp and eclecticism, finds a way to put a face (check that: a noisy, raucous battalion of faces) on the industry which prudes and patrons alike would prefer to remain faceless. Indeed, the show's one-woman chorus finale claims, "Don’t be afraid of being alone / You're never alone," but Durwood leaves you with the feeling that in the sex industry, this is mostly wishful thinking.
No Traveler
Written and performed by Penny Pollak
Directed by Samantha Jones
Music by Mike Milazzo
Hi, How Can I help You
Written and Performed by Scout Durwood
Directed by Lucile Baker Scott
July 14th, 15th, 16th
9pm
$15
59 E 59 St. Theater
59 East 59th Street
New York, NY 10022-1104
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