A Girl's Guide to Chaos (Cynthia Heimel)
Success occasionally defeats itself. As soon as there is a gold standard, what was once a competitive advantage becomes de rigueur, and you have to do so much more work to stand out. This affects comedy to a greater extent than other industries: a successful comedian breeds many imitators, and then that person is seen as nothing new.
That perhaps is true of today’s play A Girl’s Guide to Chaos by Cynthia Heimel. It is by no means bad or boring, but it could be said to be comedically inert. In 2023 there’s nothing new about it, but that probably wasn’t true in 1988 when it was written.
Cynthia Heimel was an article writer for many publications, including Playboy. In interviews she stated that she was a square peg: too sex-focused for academic feminism and too angry for traditional fashion magazines she took work where she could get it. She may have been a radical voice in the 80’s and 90’s, but today her opinions from that time read as normal.
A Girl’s Guide to Chaos is adapted from her articles and boy does it show. Even though there are ostensibly five characters looking for love in New York City in 1988, in reality everyone sounds the same and has the same comedic voice as Heimel herself.
Thankfully, it is a funny voice, and the play clips along, but it doesn’t ever settle into a conventional plot, but mostly has the characters trade comedic monologues that briefly settle into something resembling a conversation. It’s a bit like Sex in the City by way of Cathy.
I’d be highly interested in how this show plays today. It’s self-consciously set in 1988, modern by the play’s standards, terribly far in the past for us. The characters contrast their modern existence to what was happening the 70s too frequently for it to be easily updated to modern day. I think it could still play well today.
As a Producer
If Pronoia were to produce this, it would primarily be as a historical piece, which is something I’ve wanted to do for some time.
As a Designer
There’s quite a lot here to do, actually. The play doesn’t exist anywhere, so the scenic design can go wild and crazy, depending on what the director wants to do; since it’s set in the 80’s that makes props and costumes have a clear direction to go in, but with plenty of options to choose from; and although the inclination would be to go simple with the lighting, a skilled designer could have a lot of fun building moments since the play isn’t exactly realistic and moves around constantly.
Writing Lessons
The trouble with writing these immediately following reading the play is that I haven’t had time to sit with any ideas, or to fully follow them and see if they’re fertile. As time goes on we’ll see if it changes, but it basically means that if there isn’t something I love and want to steal, it’s hard to have a lot to put in this section.
This play’s undergirding is similar to what is arguably my most successful piece of writing, Bertie: A Tragedy in Eight Comedies, in that this is strung together articles masquerading as a cohesive piece, and Bertie is a series of sketches attempting the same thing. If I notice that structure and see its flaws, could it be that Bertie has similar problems?
The last two revisions of Bertie have sought to take steps away from the sketch comedy roots and establish more traditional theatrical story-telling, maybe I need to keep going in that direction.
Or maybe not? Who knows.
