THEATRE REVIEW: WISHFUL DRINKING
19 JUL/11

JOHN COULBOURN - QMI Agency
Rating: 3 out of 5

TORONTO - Carrie Fisher opens her performances of Wishful Drinking — the cleverly titled one-woman show she brought to the Royal Alexandra last week — by sprinkling glitter on her audience, after she's liberally sprinkled it on herself. 
Particularly around her eyes. Which would no doubt be a lovely effect were she sharing an intimate candlelight dinner with a few thousand of her most intimate friends.


But, of course, she's not. Instead, she's on stage, cocooned in a faux living room set created by designer David Korins and brightly lit by designer Greg Brunton, all of which conspires, on occasion, to make the daughter of screen legend Debbie Reynolds and one-time crooner Eddie Fisher look like she just might be shooting death-rays from her eyes. 
And while it is, admittedly, an interesting look for an aging Princess Leia, it is somewhat out of tune with the smurf-balls Fisher fires off during the show as though they were steel-tipped spears.


All of which is to say that anyone tuning into Fisher's two-hour romp down memory lane hoping for dirt is going to have to content themselves with dust-bunnies. Her late father once swallowed both his miniature hearing aids, thinking they were pills. Her famous mother once suggested Fisher carry a child for Reynold's husband of the hour. George Lucas decreed she couldn't wear underwear in Star Wars because "there is no underwear in space."


And that's about as dishy as it gets, even though Fisher launches her show with an anecdote about waking up with a gay Republican dead in her bed — a story which frankly sounds a whole lot more interesting than it plays. In fact, even after she opens the fourth wall to take questions on the experience from the floor, it proves to be a dead-end beginning.


When it comes to dishing on her famous parents and their infamous love affairs and business disasters, however, she's relatively (you should pardon the expression) forthcoming, particularly in a segment she labels Hollywood Inbreeding 101. 
And then, of course, there is her own storied past — her marriage to Paul Simon, her stint in Star Wars, her much discussed and ongoing battles with bipolar disorder (which even now requires bouts of electro-convulsive therapy), and even her struggle with her weight and alcoholism.

On one level, under the assured direction of Stephen Eich (reinforcing the original Broadway direction of Tony Taccone), she seems to hold nothing back. 
She's bright. She's witty. She's personable. And in the end, she's a bit of a closed shop, too, far more willing to discuss those that inhabit the world around her it seems than what it is like to inhabit the world inside her. There is something wonderfully brave, even open-hearted, about her willingness to make a joke out of her health issues, but one senses something deeper lurking under her often glib autobiographical reportage.


Wishful Drinking is not, by any stretch, a tell-all. Nor is it even, as Fisher herself once labelled her father's autobiography in a conversation with my colleague Jim Slotek, a Libel Most. It's just a leisurely stroll down memory lane with what might be the ultimate, to borrow Fisher's own word, sur-thrivor — a woman who can apparently shoot death-rays from her eyes.