Unemployed. Finally.

Reviewed by Gray Palmer
Whitefire Theatre
Through June 10

The Camp mode of enjoyment has a warm appreciation for special kinds of failure. Heather Dowling’s solo show, her stage memoir, Unemployed. Finally., now playing at Whitefire Theatre, makes a very curious seesaw motion between kitsch and camp. Perceiving these modes may depend on shifts in the disposition of the viewer as much as on qualities of the work.

The poster art tells you about the show at a glance. Dowling looks like Christina Ricci as an icon of a Tibetan labor goddess, many-armed, each hand holding a token of service-work. She is an entire surplus army of labor in one figure.

The play, resourceful enough to be called a play rather than a monologue, is a working-class account of thirty years of shitty labor. The conclusion isn’t exactly a feeling of solidarity with other workers — that would be a political awakening, which is definitely not on offer here. Instead the account moves through a work-life of humiliations (including the Navy, and journalism for a rag identified as The Prospect Daily Courier, and stints as that cold-call voice from the bottom of a pyramid scheme trying to sell you vitamins) until we seem to arrive at Dowling’s position of simple, quotidian-glamorous fulfillment as the author of this play … a show-biz fantasy. Definitely a camp conclusion.

First, some cold news: Kitsch in art is “art with a 100 percent, absolute and instantaneous availability for consumption,” as the critic Walter Benjamin said. Well, that’s true of Dowling’s diction as a writer, and her stock of images, which are, one might say, not only workerist, but specifically Arizona kitsch. Also, it’s true of her acting style.

Part of the evening’s curriculum vitae is Dowling’s arrival in Los Angeles with a performer’s dream — and at that point in the evening, a kitsch-despiser might observe, “This is The Day of the Locust from the point-of-view of a locust.” But a harsh attitude toward the play’s sentimentality is disarmed by a see-sawing motion into camp warmth.

So, second, the warm news: A quick check of Sontag’s still-vital essay “Notes on ‘Camp’” gives confirmation of the bitter, humiliating, dual pleasures in Dowling’s show: “Pure Camp is always naïve, … the essential element is seriousness, a seriousness that fails … [with] the proper mixture of the exaggerated, the fantastic, the passionate, and the naïve.”

That very much describes not only the story, but also Dowling the performer. This being a solo show, she includes many impressions of other characters. The press packet says thirty-nine, but I gave up on my tally. She’s not a very good impressionist, but here’s the thing about camp in performance — it simply doesn’t matter if you’re good or clever; in fact, says Sontag, further warmth can be generated by slight badness if the performer is naïve and serious, and remains who she is even during a series of supposed developments or transformations. In that sense, Dowling is actually quite funny. It’s risibly hard to tell the difference between some impressions. Her older men all seem alike (her father is indistinguishable from other authority figures). Her younger men (frequently in a sports-bar setting) come in two styles, louche or shy, sorting them conveniently into studs and duds.

Why doesn’t it matter? “Camp discloses innocence, but also, when it can, corrupts it,” Sontag observes. Dowling reveals her own innocence; that’s just something she has (if the viewer is disposed to see it). Deliberate camp, however, is open to criticism — but this play really has no intention of camping. That effect is in the eye of the beholder who can warmly appreciate that innocence is beyond criticism. Her memoir is a serious, naïve account that might be subtitled How I Made This Play.

The direction by Jessica Lynn Johnson is good.

Whitefire Theatre, 13500 Ventura Blvd., Sherman Oaks; Fri. 8 p.m.; through June 10. (800) 838-3006, brownpapertickets.com. Running time: one hour and 20 minutes with no intermission.