With the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in full swing this midsummer, an impressive array of Irish acts and performers are sure to be found in the fray, enamoring international audiences across the festival's many venues.
Among those exciting notables is Sarah Maria Lafferty, who returns to the Fringe for her third production, and first one-woman show, in "How to Become a Movie Star?" which plays in theSpace @ Surgeons' Hall through this Saturday, Aug. 23.
The Mayo native with Off-Broadway credits, Lafferty arrives at this year's Fringe following her previous five-star performance in "The Bad Daters" (reviewed here in the Echo) with a lighthearted, sincere, inspiring and uplifting compilation of life lessons from the teachable moments of an actor, written and performed by Lafferty.
"How to Become a Movie Star?" strings together an encouraging comedy through the autobiographical anecdotes of Lafferty's life, drawing from personal memories in diaries kept from childhood, with modest embellishments in its retelling for dramatic effect. A mid-career report in her own words, Lafferty offers audiences the optimistic side of the honest endeavor for stardom, from her earliest ambitions as a precocious and pragmatic child, through gauntlets of vocational doom, to the comically coincidental encounters with a certain Irish movie star of a certain out-of-print 1994 memoir.
Over the 55 minutes, the generally on-kilter pace of Lafferty's repartee indulges the sometimes-categoric memento of the actor's life—the affirming monologue of passion and determination—yet varies in parts as Lafferty learns about her own life, when it deviates from the dream of fame. What those particular learnings are could be more solidly extracted, especially considering the tendency of the memoir-in-performance to be overproduced and veer into trivialities. Nonetheless, Lafferty's humble, modest and funny recurring lesson—to teach by the act of living and learning, and to be taught in turn—made the grade for this audience.
With her understatedly sharp pulse for comedy and a plethora of whimsy, Lafferty surprises her audience with troves of sprinkling laughter, interwoven through the congeniality of her message. Lafferty’s comedic style, a corky earnestness that sets audiences up for the punchline a mile away before boomeranging it back around their heads, was achieved to unique results, while the tempo of her storytelling, imbued confidence and familiarity, conveyed the homely, oft-recalled reminiscence of a conversation between friends.
Per the no-frills norm of the Fringe, Lafferty brings her one-artist act to audiences carte blanche, performing "How to Become a Movie Star?" whole cloth in black box, which she easily compensates for with vibrancy and momentum.
Lafferty's performance is expressive, dynamic and consistently upbeat, as she channels the versatile revolving door of cast members, each played by herself, which she reveals with flawless charm. Accessible, kind, and un-beguiling, "How to Becoming a Movie Star?" is a friendly seminar for actors of all ages, and a quaint schooling on the connections that characterize our lives.
The only disappointment of the evening is that Lafferty's role model—the aspired movie star in question—does not appear at the finale of this show. But perhaps that is because the movie star in question is already here in our midst.
Review rating: Four stars.
For tickets, visit here.
