Everyone in the mostly older audience knows Carrie's Fisher's history. Cleverly and humorously, the performer begins her two-hour one-woman show, Wishful Drinking by describing her most recent scandal; her gay friend found dead in her bedroom. The tone of the evening is set.
She will make fun of her situations because as "awful things get further away, it's easier to find the humor in them." She flash backs to her famous parents, actress Debbie Reynolds and crooner Eddie Fisher. She has the audience in stitches as she explains inbreeding Hollywood 101 where she tries to decide if her daughter and the grandson of Elizabeth Taylor are related. Noting the makeup of her audience, she explains to the three people too young to have heard her the story .
"Think of Debbie Reynolds as Jennifer Aniston, Eddie Fisher as Brad Pitt and Elizabeth Taylor as Angelina Jolie."
There's a lot of dark humor in Fisher's show. "If my lines weren't funny, they'd just be true." By making herself the butt of much of the humor, Fisher wins over the audience immediately. She is disarming and clever, making fun of her own weight, explaining how hard it is to keep the Princess Leia size for 30 years.
In addition to mocking herself, Fisher acerbically pokes fun at her 82-year-old father, Eddie, who came to her show with his drug dealer. She also jokes about his exploits with women. His famous song was, "Oh, My Papa oh my faux pas" she puns.
Fisher's a bit gentler with her mother who, she notes, lives next door to her. Her gibes about her mother and maternal grandmother are mostly repeating their outrageous comments.
Fisher does a lengthy routine about George Lucas, director of "Star Wars," who owns her image as Leia. She uses overheads images to show the many "endorsements" of her movie image (owned by Lucas) including a life-size doll and Pez dispenser.
Fisher glosses over her relationship with Paul Simon. She speaks even more briefly of her second husband, father of her daughter. However, she is harshest about herself.
It's hard not to like the quick-witted self-effacing Fisher who interacts with the audience, sprinkling glitter over people and learning names. She's smart, creative and brutally honest. She has some unflattering, albeit hysterical, comments to make about Harry Karl, her mother's second husband and his other wife, Marie McDonald (the "body").
Wearing black silk pajamas with a long coat over it, Fisher strolls barefooted back and forth on stage. Sometimes she sits on her feet on one couch or the other. It feels as if the audience members are guests in her home.
I wasn't excited about seeing Fisher in Wishful Drinking, and I didn't begin the evening as a Carrie Fisher fan. However, I definitely left as one. Too bad they only sold T-shirts in the lobby; I really wanted a Pez dispenser.
