THEATRE REVIEW: THE INVISIBLE GIRL
14 Oct'10

JOHN COULBOURN - QMI Agency
Rating: 2.5 out of 5

While it may not have yet been definitively measured, it could be argued with some conviction that the face of this old earth has been changed more radically by simple erosion than by cataclysm; that more distance has been travelled in baby steps than in Gulliver's massive strides. And in the same vein, changes in the face of human nature are most often measured in tiny increments rather than in seismic shifts in one's point of view. Complex as such notions might be, they might make for more pleasurable viewing when one approaches THE INVISIBLE GIRL, a new play from Michele Riml that launched the 45th season at the Lorraine Kimsa Theatre for Young People on Wednesday.

The girl in question is a young princess of upspeak named Ali (played by Amy Lee)- a Bratz-on-steroids type of ingenue who finds herself rendered, like, utterly invisible when she, like, inadvertently runs afoul of the leader of the Ultimates, a girl-gang in which she herself has heretofore played a pivotal role.

And just what was her Ultimate sin, you are asking? Well, it seems Ali has thoughtlessly nominated her classmate Dolores (wittily known amongst the Ultimates as FD which is short for Fat Dolores, 'cause, like, it's rude to call someone fat) for an honour coveted by the leader of the Ultimates. For her crime, Ali has not only been frozen out of the gang, losing access to borrowed gladrags displaying all the right labels and her pivotal contribution to the ultimate face, but to the chance to meet heartthrob Justin Bieber at Canada's Wonderland as well -- Oh -- EEEEEEEEEE!

Set in an oversized closet created by Toronto's most designing woman, Camellia Koo, THE INVISIBLE GIRL takes place in flashback. Over a week of Ali's life, each day introduced by a pair of sexy little panties labeled with the day of the week and every other character other than Ali, played by an outfit of clothing draped on a hanger, as if to say, this is what little girls are made of. And, under the direction of Nina Lee Aquino, assisted by the lighting design of Kimberly Purtell and the video genius of Romeo Candido (who manages to turn the entire stage into a cellphone and set the cause of spelling back about 1,000 years in the process), Lee attacks the role with admirable intensity, creating a portrait of both a self-obsessed girl and her community that is nothing if not completely believable.

Perhaps even too believable, which finally makes it all the more tragic that this script lets her down so dramatically, tracing a character arc for young Ali that never lets her really grow -- to take responsibility for her behaviour either before she was rejected by the Ultimates or after.

Oh, ultimately she does the right thing by FD, but not only does she do it in spite of herself, she still hopes she'll be able to find her way back into the vacuous heart of the Ultimates to boot. It's not her friends she misses in exile, but the power. Having been a bully, she gets a taste of what it feels like to be bullied, but one senses that, in future, Ali will still be a bully -- but a bully who might have a twinge of conscience every now and then.

With plays like this to support the cause of stamping out school-yard bullying, one can confidently predict that while we may not see the end of it by the time our great-grandchildren become great grandparents, we will have moved marginally closer at least.