MORE
At the Union Square Theatre, 100 E. 17th St. (212) 307-7171.
—-
ONCE again, a talented person tortures herself with the eternal worry, “Why not more?”
Now Yeardley Smith reflects upon her life, her career and her wants in a solo play called “More,” which opened last night at the Union Square Theatre.
Smith enjoys some measure of success as the voice of Lisa Simpson, Bart’s brainy sister, in “The Simpsons.” But apparently, that’s not enough: As a little girl, and as a grown-up, too, Smith wanted beauty, fame and love.
Her director, Judith Ivey, keeps Smith moving around a set (by Loy Arcenas) consisting of a giant picture frame and, in the middle of that, a window hanging in space.
Dressed in a glittery T-shirt and jeans (and looking closer to Lisa’s age than her own thirtysomething years), Smith takes us, via mostly humorous anecdotes, through her early years with a rich, cold Washington family; her early forays in local musicals, and her Broadway debut in 1983 in Tom Stoppard’s “The Real Thing.”
Later, in Los Angeles, after a run of mainly stinko films, she lands a gig on “The Simpsons.”
But all this was the calm that hid the storm. In private, Smith was, and had been for years, on a binge-and-purge craze. We get lots of details of her eating and vomiting regime, which she kept secret even from her second and apparently wonderful husband. Indeed, writing and performing this show are presented as a means of aiding in her recovery.
Smith is a likable person, and her show means well. But it never gets beyond the old “show-business neurosis and how to cure it.”
Unlike another one-woman show, “My Kitchen Wars,” the one never achieves the exhilarating sense of an old life dying and a new one beginning.