Hysterical women created by a hysterical man

Steven’s first play, They Offered Bob and Wilma Cash, had Sylvia Miles in the lead with Steven playing opposite as her son.

His second play, Weekend In Rio, was work shopped at the Steppenwolf Studio in Chicago with Laurie Metcalfe in the lead followed by public performances at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival where it received two Best Actress nominations.

His third play, It Woulda Been Nice, was performed by Steven at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival at exactly the same time as Weekend In Rio.

An eye opener -
A weekend in Rio

TWO PLAYS, one writer, three women and a hell of a lot of screaming. Steven Froelich, from Chicago’s Steppenwolf studios, is spreading his acid-tongued talents over two theatres simultaneously during this year’s Fringe.

At the Pleasance Dome, a plane takes off for Weekend in Rio, at the Pleasance Over the road, Froelich doubles up as writer/actor in his one man (playing three ladies) show, It woulda been nice. And the latter features the three ladies from the former. Confused? You will be.

As a rule of thumb, ranting, hysteria and in-flight entertainment music should sound alarm bells in the theatre, but in these two plays it is the stuff that binds the delicious white-trash operatics. Weekend in Rio, ingeniously staged with the audience as passengers seated either side of a catwalk style aisle, tells the tale of Sugar, a middle-aged mother-from-hell as she jets off after her thieving son Chester. Chester, in the company of two constantly bitching friends, Tina and Jenny, has absconded with cash from the family business, but the plot is more or less irrelevant; it is merely a platform for what is essentially a series of mad-woman-in-the-attic monologues.

Both plays are self-contained pieces although It Would Been Nice allows the three principal characters to evolve into a surreal platform that make more sense if you’ve seen Rio first. But it’s Froelich’s extreme take on his characters that makes this absurd one-hander work. Performing from inside a black box, Froelich exposes only his fast talking head, lit from above by a disco ball, and the effect is unnerving as it is funny.

No woman I know speaks like this, in spleen-and-uterus-venting sentences with flourishes that demand a feather boa in one hand and a dagger in the other. It’s as though Woody Allen had devised a script for Jerry Springer: There is much talk of bludgeoning people’s brains alongside neurotic Martha Stewart-style comments about recipes and interior decor. In both plays, we are party to hysterical women - as created by a hysterical man.

Sarah Barrell (The Independent).