The Catholic Girl's Guide to Losing Your Virginity

With its long, wordy title and portrayal of a woman definitely past adolescence costumed in a parochial school uniform, one might expect an evening of lowbrow farce, or even pornography. Wrong! Instead the audience gets an evening of tasty one-liners and the pleasure of watching an actor exhibiting his many talents.

The Catholic Girl's Guide to Losing Your Virginity recounts the exploits of the titular virgin Lizzy in her quest to lose her virginity. Lizzy grew up with a rigid Catholic upbringing and has been saving her virginity for her future husband. However, with her 25th birthday fast approaching, Lizzy is not convinced this has been a wise course and she's now determined to get laid before the fateful event.

This production successfully pulls off the risky gamble of casting a single actor to play multiple roles in a performance. This two-actor cast consists of the playwright Annie Hendy as Lizzy and a chameleon named Cyrus Alexander as everybody else!

Alexander plays so many characters in the course of the 90-minute show I lost count of how many! He's a priest, a horny teenager, a BFF, a bad date, a budding Russian actor, a really bad date, someone with a shoe fetish, a licker, a nerd, a bachelor on the eve of his wedding in Vegas. Alexander even plays a nun - and quite convincingly! With his countless transformations, Alexander alters his accents, his body language and his hairstyles in kaleidoscopic fashion. It's a quick change tour de force.

Hendy wears the same plaid-skirted, knee-high parochial school uniform (but with black heels) throughout. So distinct, and possibly distracting is her uniform, I wondered if this costuming was making the sublimal (or blatant) statement that Lizzy never changes in this play.

As limned by Hendy, Lizzy is so focused on her goal to get her hyman broken, she blames everyone else but herself for her failure. I found Hendy's Lizzy such a frustrating, one-note, tunnel-visioned character, I eventually lost patience and interest in her.

Yet how generous she is as a playwright in allowing her co-star the opportunity to steal scenes from her. You have to wonder if this play would work as well without an actor with a range like Alexander's.

The simple brick walls of the set designed by Keith Mitchell effectively suggest the various places Lizzy's quest to rid herself of virginity takes her: her church, her apartment, a back alley, nightclubs, banquet halls. Great use of projections on two rectangular frames on both sides of the stage, as well as the upstage center stain-glass church effect, enhance the sense of location.