I’m of two minds about Vanessa Severo’s one-woman play Frida…A Self-Portrait about the life of painter Frida Kahlo. While she delivers a magnetic performance as Kahlo, employing movement and costumes to sometimes stunning effect, Severo’s penchant for dropping out of character to tell the audience why the artist means so much to her would perhaps be better left to an after-play talkback segment or to interviews and profiles in the media and program notes.
It’s a close call, though. Severo comes by her obsession honestly. She was born with a left hand missing most of its digits and she understandably identifies closely with Kahlo’s lifetime struggle to overcome the physical effects of polio and a horrific accident that left her pinned under a trolly, necessitating years of physical therapy and more pain than most people could bear.
Severo’s story does mirror Kahlo’s to a certain degree. But one wonders what Kahlo might have made of an admirer grafting her own story onto the biography of a world-famous artist already replete with drama. As compelling as Severo’s life is, it feels odd to see it share the stage with Kahlo’s. Val Kilmer is similarly obsessed with Mark Twain, but when he performed a one-man show about the writer, Kilmer kept explorations of the deep connection he feels to Twain outside the narrative.
The question of where the biographical connections might best be presented aside, Frida…A Self-Portrait, directed by Joanie Schultz, is a brisk, gripping play that packs a big emotional punch into its single act. And the way that Severo artfully deploys garments strung across the stage on three clotheslines is very clever indeed. Her artful stage pictures and soulful inhabitation of Kahlo’s character do the artist proud and combine to give us fresh insights into a dramatic, creative and ultimately tragic life.
Frida…A Self-Portrait runs through February 23 at Writers Theatre.
For a full roundup of reviews of this show, visit Theatre in Chicago.
Photo by Zach Rosing, courtesy of Indiana Repertory Theatre
