Every notice how humor so often feels uncomfortable? The reason is simple enough--even when we laugh with someone, rather than at them, laughter tends to feel cruel. Whether a pie in the face or an unbelievably uncomfortable job interview, our reaction is to people's suffering. But the best laughter includes laughing at ourselves, not out of denial but recognition of our own faults, our own need to deal with pain by making it into something else. Squirrel!!! pretty much does that with the story of a young (well, young to me) woman dealing with ADHD, i.e. Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder. Never seeming to grow up, she finds herself increasingly looking like a total failure every time she takes the slightest glance inward. And with reason, to be fair. She rarely holds down a job for long, while the one that did last held no advancement and consisted of her being treated as pretty worthless. Here's the thing--I don't have ADHD and it seems unlikely many of us in the audience did. Yet we all felt for her. All recognized ourselves in her doubts, fears, despair. Yeah, she tells funny stories and makes more than a fistful of really good jokes, but what makes us remember this show is how our hearts felt touched. How we saw in this young woman ourselves.
Squirrel!!! was part of the 2018 Hollywood Fringe Festival and has one encore performance on Saturday June 30, at 5pm at the Lounge Theatre 6201 Santa Monica Blvd (one block east of Vine).
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