First Folio dresses up 'Love, Loss and What I Wore'
Some folks will write off “Love, Loss and What I Wore” as the theatrical equivalent of “chick lit.” Indeed, the 2009 off-Broadway hit, now playing at First Folio Theatre in Oak Brook, does just what its title says by sharing women's reflections on key life moments and what they were wearing at the time.
But “Love, Loss and What I Wore” isn't just about superficial fashion trends. The funny and frequently touching stories — as crafted by sisters Nora Ephron and Delia Ephron from interviews and Ilene Beckerman's best-selling book — are often near universal. They provide the chance for women in the audience to contemplate how their own favorite clothes factored with life experiences.
As for the guys begrudgingly dragged along or not, “Love, Loss and What I Wore” amusingly articulates clothing dilemmas they might not have previously considered as faced by their mothers, wives, sisters or friends.
First Folio's take isn't as celebrity-stocked as its 2011 Chicago debut at the Broadway Playhouse at Water Tower Place. But First Folio offers much more to look at than the earlier production's bare stage starkness of music stands and chairs with a stationary flip book duplicating Beckerman's blocky fashion illustrations.
For First Folio, director/costume designer Rachel Lambert has teamed up with set designer Joanna Iwanicka to create a theatrical space filled with oversized dressing rooms (complete with swinging saloon-style doors) and a number of rotating wooden silhouettes of women with various body shapes. Lambert and Iwanicka also toss the flip book in favor of cast members toting in Beckerman's drawings attached to coat hangers as if they were saleswomen proudly presenting outfits found in a back stockroom.
And you can tell that First Folio's quintet of actresses clearly relishes the material, which runs from comic and reflective monologues to snippets of stereotypical interjections and objections — particularly riffs on parental disapproval and how pop star Madonna influenced fashion in the 1980s and early '90s.
Barbara Figgins plays the principal narrator and illustrator “Gingy” (the stand-in for Beckerman), and she richly shares her stories of a woman looking back on the twists and turns of her life with bemusement and resignation.
The other women juggle a variety of roles, with each actress given shining moments of comic and dramatic material while wearing outfits rendered largely in black, white and grays. Lydia Berger Gray drew plenty of laughs with her diatribe about purses, while Hayley Rice genially got across a woman who questions if the early loss of her mother is why she has never learned to look fashionably put together. Danielle Davis digs deep as a defiant young woman facing breast cancer treatment, while Lindsey Pearlman convincingly wells up with tears portraying a lesbian upset about her parents' opposition to her forthcoming wedding.
Upsetting topics like rape, sickness and death are sometimes touched upon, but perhaps too fleetingly. It's as if the Ephrons didn't want to ruin the vibe of what is essentially a lighthearted and amiable gabfest wrapped up in a lifetime of clothing.
This arguably makes “Love, Loss and What I Wore” feel a little less consequential than it could be. But then again, the show, as winningly rendered by First Folio, wouldn't be as entertaining if all it was focused on was funereal black.
“Love, Loss and What I Wore”
★ ★ ★
<b>Location:</b> First Folio Theatre at Mayslake Peabody Estate, 31st St. and Route 83, Oak Brook, (630) 986-8067 or <a href="http://firstfolio.org">firstfolio.org</a>
<b>Showtimes:</b> 8 p.m. Wednesday, Friday and Saturday, 3 p.m. Thursday and Sunday; through April 25
<b>Running time:</b> 90 minutes with no intermission
<b>Tickets:</b> $29-$39; $25-$35 seniors and students
<b>Parking:</b> Free adjacent parking lots
<b>Rating:</b> Some language and issues of sexuality, but appropriate for teenagers and older