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Taking a psychedelic drug like LSD can lead to revelations both euphoric and terrifying. Much feels like a nightmare in the acid trip Sarina Freda enacts for us in her funny, frantic solo show no no no please no god no, nevermind i’m fine. But there are many layers to this meticulously crafted piece of small-scale theater. So what are we to conclude at the end? What do we learn?
I won’t give it away. But I couldn’t if I wanted to. The show left me both fizzily entertained and dizzily confused. Mission accomplished? The show is a ball of comic and cosmic energy. Tom Costello’s direction, Lee Lillis’ lighting and Nicholas Webster’s sound design set off Freda’s furiously engaging personality and impeccable comic timing like an elegant frame around an exquisite painting. Only this painting is in constant motion.
An Acid Trip to Remember
Freda’s fundamental personality emerges around the edges of the focal story about an acid trip she takes during a weekend in the Catskills with friends who include her current crush. Real phone conversations with her mother, and family memories, interlace with the hallucinations and half-realities she experiences as the LSD takes hold. Lighting effects, shadowy and of many colors, feel almost alive, while precision sound design magnifies a performance by Freda that’s simultaneously sharply polished and emotionally raw.
It’s just her, but the production creates an illusion of multiplicity as she whirls from hallucination to hallucination, interaction to interaction. We follow wide-eyed as she alternately recounts and acts out the trip, eventually confronting that abyss of ego-death so well-known to those who’ve tried psychedelic drugs. We move with her from fascination to terror, fully aware she’s come through the experience well enough to co-create this meticulously crafted show about it, but caught up in a performance so convincing that we worry in the moment about her sanity and survival.
Back from the Abyss
The show leaves open some frustrating questions. Psychedelics (like a lot of other things) can warp your perception of time, but Freda ends up in a time loop. Is that part of her trip, or is she experiencing flashbacks? I would have liked narrative clarity on that. The story builds momentum toward our hero finding her way from insecurity to agency and power. But then the show undercuts the reality of that emergence. This is, after all, a story in large part about hallucinations, so nothing is certain, not even reality.
I think you’d have to be a churl not to be won over by no no no please no god no, nevermind i’m fine, a slick, tight, hugely entertaining production with a devilishly appealing star. It runs through March 15 at HERE Arts Center in New York City. Information and ticket link are online.
