East Off-Off Broadway August 19, 2002
I Kissed Dash Riprock!
Reviewed By Sarika Chawla

Cyndi Freeman is sexy, neurotic and funny, and she's not afraid to show it. A 90-minute one-woman monologue, "I Kissed Dash Riprock" follows the life of a struggling actress whose career takes her through Hollywood, Boston, New York and London. She is a film extra who meets, lusts, kisses and falls for international movie star Dash Riprock--at the very moment that her own success is just around the corner.

Broken into four scenes, Freeman tells the ups and downs of this woman's relationship with Dash Riprock, a superstar with a very public personal life. Over the course of several months, she obsesses over him and their relationship, all the while finding reasons to push him away (i.e., his girlfriend). In the meantime, her career takes her to the stage in a one-woman show, receiving great acclaim despite her still-lowly status in the acting world.

The story crackles with such emotion that it seems less like a play and more like having a hyperactive woman in your living room. Freeman screeches with abandon, flails her long limbs and scampers around the tiny stage, relaying the enthusiasm of a woman whose dreams could come true, if she'll let them. Quite often, the performance is so real that there is virtually no distinction between Freeman and her character. She gesticulates wildly, tucking her hair behind her ears and tugging at her slinky dresses, so much that it seems to be Freeman's self consciousness, not her character's, that drive these motions.

Some of the strongest moments occur when she articulates voices that are not her own, but that reside in her head; namely, a 14-year old romantic named Juliet, and a 90-year old wheelchair-bound woman. But Freeman's performance throughout is charged with electricity and her story is well-crafted and engaging. In the end, the only question left unanswered is? just who is Dash Riprock?

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Fringe NYC 2002: I Kissed Dash Riprock!
by Adam Feldman

The exclamation point in the title of I Kissed Dash Riprock! is very much in evidence in the first monologue of Cyndi Freeman's engaging one-woman show. Freeman's character, an aspiring actress in Los Angeles, has just spent an evening with a studly Hollywood celebrity, and has fallen into a hopeless "David Cassidy crush." Recounting her date with Dash to a friend, she literally shrieks with excitement. But Dash fails to call her as promised, and by the show's second monologue the title's punctuation seems to have subtly changed into a question mark. By the third, it has become a matter-of-fact period, and in the fourth and final segment it evolves into something like an ellipsis. Freeman's script, co-written with her director Ellen Groves, convincingly charts the heroine's relationship with Dash over a two-year period, during which they meet several times but never go beyond yearning lip locks and heavy flirtation. He wants more, but she resists; Dash has a girlfriend, and she doesn't want "to be part of a betrayal." I Kissed Dash Riprock! is canny on the subject of intimacy, and its story of desire deferred gives it a wholesome sexual tension that is rare at the Fringe. The writing could be tightened, but Freeman is a dynamo. Whether bickering with the voices in her head--notably a chirpily romantic teenager she calls "Juliet"--or candidly addressing her own fears, she is unfailingly winning; and with her long brown hair and a curvy body squeezed into a series of revealing sheaths, she is also something of a knockout in the Mimi Rogers mode. You leave the show thinking that this Dash must be mad, because Freeman is well-nigh irresistible.

www.oobr.com

I'm ready for my closeup, Mr. DeMille

I Kissed Dash Riprock

Written and Performed by Cyndi Freeman
Co-written and directed by Ellen Groves
Additional direction by Max Burbank
Planet Girl Productions/FringeNYC
Review by Miranda Lundskaer-Nielsen

During the introduction, an indignant head popped through the curtain to deny a cheeky allegation before disappearing again, only to reappear momentarily as the star of her one-woman show. It was a fitting first impression of an informal, intelligent, and humorous force of nature called Cyndi Freeman.

There is a common fallacy among solo performers that their own lives are the perfect material for observations about the human condition. While Freeman has allegedly based much of her material on her own experiences, she and co-writer Ellen Groves have wisely woven them into a partly fictionalized storyline tracing the bizarre and sporadic relationship between two performers at opposite ends of the show-business hierarchy. Divided into four parts (in LA, Boston, New York, and London), the piece has two narrative strands: the life of a struggling solo performer (which draws unashamedly on Freeman’s own career, down to describing the theatre the audience is in) and her bizarre stop-start relationship with hunky movie star "Dash Riprock," whom she meets while working as an extra in one of his blockbuster vehicles. The eccentric showbiz love story complements the amusing but more clichéd tales from a struggling actress -- the dismal apartments, humiliating jobs, and itinerant lifestyle.

The production boasted a minimal set (a mattress, a bench, and a chair) and effective but limited lighting effects by Robbie Gray. Given this spare background, the show depended totally on the performer, and Freeman carried it off with aplomb. Savvy and elegant in a series of sexy, figure-hugging dresses, Freeman's stage persona was driven to exuberant outbursts or comic paralysis when faced with strong emotions. This was a one-woman battle between intellect and emotions, between morality and desire, and between her romantic and analytical tendencies. These conflicting instincts were hilariously dramatized in a series of imaginary characters whom she claimed to see at key moments: the chorus line of ex-students (heavily made up adolescents who repeated back her lessons in morality) and two alter egos, one an impatient 90-year-old woman urging her to take a chance and the other a hilarious twist on Shakespeare’s Juliet, an annoyingly naïve and righteous teenager.

Freeman’s wry intelligence, astute observation, and cheeky satire also color her portrayals of other characters. Through a series of phone calls and meetings, she created a Dash Riprock who was all too recognizable: intense, attentive, and sensitive but also emotionally unstable, self-involved, and totally lacking in humor. This last characteristic was shared by the other male lover, a superbly rendered British actor whose flimsy veneer of bonhomie was scratched to reveal the rock-solid narcissism underneath. Other fleeting cameos included a vague, affable British director and a star-struck LA hotel concierge. 

It was a demanding ride; there were a few repetitive moments in the writing and staging, but overall Freeman demonstrated both vocal versatility and a strong physical presence, moving from the tension of repressed desire to expansive outbursts in which her long arms and legs sailed through the small room, as if defying the mundane reality of gravity. On leaving the theatre, the lasting impression was of a woman with more thoughts, emotions, and energy than is strictly advisable for a balanced outlook; but then, balance is not what this show is about. I Kissed Dash Riprock is a glorious celebration of the overactive mind, an ode to the absurdity of human interactions, and a reminder that there can be beauty in emotional chaos and uncertainty. In theatre as in life, sometimes more is more. 

TIME  OUT NEW YORK

Critic’s Pick, Comedy

I Kissed Dash Riprock