By Ernest Kearney — The courage shown by Playwright/Performer Holly Sidell in recounting her long struggle against cancer, resulting from the hereditary ravages of the BRCA gene mutation, is admirable.
In Deconstructing Holly, she recounts her surgeries, “facing the loss of all the biological organs that deem one a woman,” and seeing her lifelong dream of motherhood being stolen from her with both honesty and humor and under Jonathan Fahn’s direction shows herself to an be exceedingly engaging presence on stage.

The problem here, as in the efforts of so many first-time soloists, is a cluttering of presentation and relevant material.
Praying the night before her surgery, a heavenly spirit appears, who, like Dante’s Virgil, Ebenezer’s trio of spooks and George Bailey’s Clarence, revisits Holly’s past in hopes of enlightening her future.
This device could be workable, but in the present configuration of the piece is somewhat maladroitly employed. It may not be so much the fault of the device itself as much as what it delivers is far too much.
Ms. Sidell provides us a hefty portion of her life story and a lengthy tab of her relational missteps with old boyfriends tumbling on stage like clowns being belched out of a very small car parked in Barnum and Bailey’s center ring.
This is partially problematic because Ms. Sidell is not overly adept at shifting characterizations. The result of this is that all the jerks she dated are indistinguishable from one another. But the primary impairment to Ms. Sidell’s undertaking arises in her piling the inconsequential on stage.

We do not need to be shown how catty and disloyal her high school friends were or how many frogs she kissed before finding her prince. It is being faced by a relentless malevolent adversary armed with terrifying weapons from its genetic arsenal that is crucial to her narrative, and it is her choice of raising life’s banner in defiance of what fate has forced on her that thrills the audience.
All the rest is flotsam and jetsam to her narrative.
For raising that banner a SILVER MEDAL.
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Deconstructing Holly
is on stage during HFF’21
at
The Broadwater
6322 Santa Monica Blvd.
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