A Bella Incarceration

Reviewed by Julia Lloyd George
Echo Theater Company
Thru August 22

RECOMMENDED

From its very first moments, Ann Noble’s one-woman show, A Bella Incarceration, offers no easy answers. There is the actor/playwright in blue scrubs, a pink clown nose, and a blonde wig. Confined to a child’s playpen representing a prison, she doesn’t seem to have much consciousness of what lies outside her cell: a mini climbing wall, a skateboard ramp, a black tent, and a large orange, circular door labeled “The Before.” Ann Loud’s idiosyncratic production design and Noble’s own high-pitched clown voice seem to represent childish regression or arrested development of some kind, but it’s difficult to say for sure.

The only apparent certainty is that Noble’s character, Bella, has been arrested and imprisoned for something. She dances around the reason, speaking instead of being in love and the benefits of height (she herself is short, a fact which pains her). The object of her love also remains mysterious, but she believes that selfless love is the reason she is in her current situation. “When I think of the bravest people,” she says, “I think they must be in love.”

She then transitions into talking about the brave women that she admires most: Nellie Bly, Emma Goldman, and Dorothy Day. Their books are her sole possessions in the cell and she likes to quote their words when she’s “not feeling free or in love.” It seems that she both wants to be like them and believes herself to be like them already, a rebel who sacrificed her freedom for a cause. Turning her pillow into a puppet with a clown nose and a wig, she then begins to have imaginary conversations with these women to glean their wisdom about her own predicament and purpose.

There is a marked innocence and wide-eyed openness in Noble’s performance, making the funniest moments ones where Bella attempts to square her off-kilter worldview with reality. Referring to a cherry-covered dress she once had that “lost its cherries,” her last question for each woman is if they know of a creature that can gobble cherries off chiffon.

This heightened “manic pixie dream girl” quirkiness eventually falls away, however, leaving a much more grounded, authentic version of Bella. The spotless martyr image she had of herself turns out to be more complicated and the “protest” that landed her in prison much more ambiguous than previously shared.

This unadorned Bella has no wig, no nose, no blue scrubs, and no high-pitched voice. She finally tells the truth about herself and apparently wins her own freedom in that way, dancing around to an instrumental version of “The Sound of Silence” as she sheds the role she’d been forcing upon herself. This is the best, most intriguing version of Bella, though the audience unfortunately sees very little of it. Nevertheless, the show succeeds in being a refreshingly offbeat, charming showcase for Noble’s undeniable talents.

Echo Theater Company at Atwater Village Theatre, 3269 Casitas Ave, Los Angeles. Tuesdays, 8pm: thru Aug. 22^nd. http://www.echotheatercompany.com/. Running time: 58 minutes with no intermission.