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Music From Big Pink

Amanda Duarte presents a self-referential fantasia of fame and reality TV


With “Lucky Pink Wonderland,” Amanda Duarte is shooting fish in a barrel -- fame, celebrity, child stars, reality television and People Magazine’s readership -- but she does it well.

The premise of Duarte’s one-woman show, seen January 29 at the People’s Improv Theater, mostly revolves around the character Pinky Peppercorn, a former child star who’s now a struggling actress/waitress fresh out of rehab. A few of the early scenes in the show are a bit disjointed, with Duarte playing a couple other characters, who are belatedly tied in to Pinky’s story.

Here and there a few lines and bits do stick out, and the show does gain momentum as it goes on. A starlet competing with Pinky for parts is excited about getting to be in an (imagined) Eddie Murphy movie where Murphy is the offspring of dolphins and plays multiple parts in makeup as usual. In another scene, Duarte’s self-absorbed actress character steals the show away from Duarte’s other character of Pinky, playing that character chattering on during a blind date.

But the best part of Duarte’s show may well be when she takes on the part of a bitter ex-actress who’s now Pinky’s boss in the restaurant, who keeps blithely telling her to have a drink.

The multiplicity of fame and reality TV sub-plots in “Lucky Pink Wonderland” do add layers to the play, to Duarte’s credit, who wrote the show as well. A fact she pokes fun at in an aside about being reduced to doing one-woman shows. Duarte’s show is self-referential in general, and to savor it one has to be a real fan of the D-list and reality TV schadenfreude.

“Lucky Pink Wonderland” has one more performance at The PIT on Saturday, February 7
   

     

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