Show Response: I Wanttt A Unicorn Frappe!!!
by Allyson Dwyer
After seeing I Wantttt A Unicorn Frappe!!! I asked Catherine Weingarten, its playwright, what does a unicorn frappe actually taste like? And she said: I don’t know, that’s why I wrote the play.
Much like her desire to try the titular drink, the play is a mischievous tragedy of desire wrapped inside a warped, kaleidoscope comedy. And it moves fast. Every line is unpredictable and frenetic in its interpretation of reality. The language of modern desire — fed to us through influencer and marketing culture — has merged with the voices of these characters. They don’t really speak to each other, they perform for some third party. An interloper watching from anywhere — perhaps a phone? Perhaps an audience?
You see, Jenny is getting married to a really hot guy. Someone she can hang all her hopes and dreams on, including a wedding that will tell the world about her, and about their idyllic love. A tale as old as America 250, this is the thing all little girls are told they want. The friction between truthful reality and manufactured reality can be a scary place, made all the more scary with the extra lens of digitality built on top of that: that of the audience, the gaze of the scroller. This production captures what it must feel like when three temperatures of reality collide. Almost like a sugar rush. Almost like a Unicorn Frappe.
There is beautiful levity given to these complicated topics and language with Alex Tobey’s cheeky, textured production. All the design elements of this show swirl together, pink and blue with globs of sparkly whipped cream, into a plasticine venti cup with stunning, hand-crafted care and love by a team of extremely talented designers. From scenic design that morphs and speaks to the audience, to gentle disco ball infused lighting, to ornate costume and prop design that looks like dreams of candy, the play world is a stunning tableau onto which the characters and language of the piece flourish.
There are five characters — Jenny, her fiance, her best friend, her mom, and her wedding planner — and each grafts onto Weingarten’s language with fluid immediacy. The actors perform zany, self-absorbed lines with the intensity of a thousand burning suns. This show starts at a full 100 and ramps up to 500 miles per hour by its end. There is an emotional power to feeling like you’re on a runaway train for a full 90 minutes with actors who are not only game but unafraid and excited, bending and swerving with the choppy rush of the dialogue without a pause.
And then the dark moments begin to land, especially toward the end, and you find yourself breathing differently. Suddenly the fun we’ve been having isn’t actually funny. These characters are far away from a place where they can ever fulfill their desires. They are distant, we are distant. You begin to remember what it feels like when you’ve had too much sugar, too much caffeine. Like Jenny, you’re unravelling. But you also cannot get enough. You feel pulled from every corner. Is this what it feels like now, to live in multiple manufactured realities? Can you put down the drink, the phone, long enough to remember?
photo: HanJie Chow
I Wanttt A Unicorn Frappe!!! runs until June 21st at The Tank. Tickets and more info here.