The DC Traveler

Actress Carrie Fisher is the daughter of singer Eddie Fisher and movie star Debbie Reynolds, as well as the former stepdaughter of Elizabeth Taylor, Connie Stevens and a few more. She was married to singer songwriter Paul Simon. And let’s not forget played Princess Leia in Star Wars.  She also has had nice roles in movies such as When Harry Met Sally and Shampoo, as well as authoring Postcards from the Edge.

Fisher’s one-woman play, Wishful Drinking,  just opened at the Lincoln Theatre in Washington, DC (as part of Arena’s Stage “re-staged”  seasons as their complex is being remodeled).  In it, she tells her personal story and all of it — the good, the bad, and the parts the Hollywood tabloids loved.

"I’m Carrie Fisher and I’m an alcoholic — and this is a true story," she begins. She then glibly tells her life story from her Beverly Hills living room set - as candidly, irreverently, and comically,

The self-deprecating, sole baring and caustically told story of her life is definitely a combination of dark and light humor. She spins a good web of stories, from her celebrity parents during her childhood, where she fought for attention starting in the hospital when she was born, to her two marriages, one to Paul Simon, the other, to a man who left her… for a man (She claims she turns men gay).

Her ad libbed interaction with the audience is hysterical, as she tells tales, and effectively uses one-liners about Hollywood inbreeding, her romances, her heavy drug use, and bipolar disorder, her resulting depression and a subsequent breakdown (why do so many Hollywood people have “breakdowns”?). She tells anecdotes about a friend dying in her bed while she slept, her role in Star Wars, rehab, the fans, the tabloids, as well as her mental illness she claims she caught from Amy Winehouse’s toilet seat.

While the script could use a bit of tightening to tie some of the stories together, she is very funny. At some points, it seems a bit too ironic or  manufactured, sounding like another celebrity talking about unrelated incidents during her after-the-fact humorous but “troubled” life.

Wishful Drinking is an entertaining insider’s view to another celebrity train wreck, perhaps before the mega-wrecks of Ana Nicole and Britney showed the world how to do it with world-class, nightly news headline notoriety, it is still very funny.

And with lines like…."Resentment - It’s like taking poison and waiting for the other person to die", how can it not be???

Wishful Drinking
Lincoln Theatre
1215 U Street, NW
Washington, DC   (map it)

Dates and Times – Nightly except Mondays, through September 28, 2008. Matinees on some Saturdays and Sundays.

Tickets - $55.00 - $74.00 and are available online.

Nearest Metro Subway Station - U Street/African-American Civil War Memorial/Cardozo, Green and Yellow line, then a 1-block walk.

Parking – Metered street and garage parking is available within a short walking distance.

Images – photo by Kevin Berne at Berkeley Repertory Theatre, Illustration by Roberto Parada

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