Images: 
Total Rating: 
***
Ended: 
March 2, 2019
Country: 
USA
State: 
Illinois
City: 
Chicago
Company/Producers: 
Broken Nose Theater
Theater Type: 
Regional
Theater: 
The Den Theater
Theater Address: 
1333 North Milwaukee Avenue
Genre: 
Drama
Author: 
Stephen Spotswood
Director: 
Elizabeth Laidlaw
Review: 

The tale of the poor boy who acquires confidence and self-esteem, often accompanied by fame and fortune, resulting from participation in athletic activities is a familiar trope in western literature. The formula applies to poor girls, too, but our heroine's deliverance from bankruptcy, divorce, unemployment, an alcoholic mother, a rebellious niece, and a sister's troubled marriage is not forged on traditional feminine accomplishments, but instead upon the gladiatorial sport of Mixed Martial Arts.

So yes, there's a lot of punching, kicking and grappling in Girl in the Red Corner, albeit of the clean, extensively regulated kind, but framed in the violence is a portrait of the rust-belt poverty that renders its enervated victims incapable of escape from social and economic oppression. When hopelessness has led to despair, who's to say that taking control of your own body can't be a first step toward independence? Our beer-swilling matriarch may declare that fighting never got her anywhere, but to a trainer at the gym (played in this production by gender non-binary actor August N. Forman), each defeated opponent represents a victory over crippling opiate addiction.

John Tovar's intricately-choreographed combat makes for spectacle as graceful as it is brutal, while Elizabeth Laidlaw (whom playgoers may recall playing Warrior Princess Xena in About Face Theater's 1999 parody of the action series) ensures that we savor the tenderness as well as the toughness in Spotswood's parable of female empowerment.

By the time we witness the inevitable Final Showdown, the connection between wrestling enemies to the mat—whether physically or psychologically—is undeniable.

Cast: 
Elise Marie Davis, Kim Boler, August N. Forman, Michelle Courvais, Mark West
Critic: 
Mary Shen Barnidge
Date Reviewed: 
January 2019