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I just ate avocado toast.
If youre put off by the above, I dont blame you.
I admit to squirming slightly as I took my seat: It all felt a touch solipsistic.
But you and I would be wrong to let our doubts win the day.
Sirna-Frests performance is a thoughtful, rewarding slow burn.
Its both the box shes trapped inside and the force thats pushing her to break out of it.
Its sometimes sympathetic, sometimes bullying, always blunt.
It delivers, according to Benson, not stage directions but stage commandments.
Yet the bar remains.
You do not need to know why.
), it can get inside her head, and it can get inside ours.
Its the voice of a connoisseur, someone with opinions (Some people like to add fennel.
I dont), and the voice of an analyst, a dissector and a playwright.
Yes, thats Kate Benson murmuring through the mike, playing a game with her own writers omnipotence.
Is it possible to escape the anxiety of analysis?
Or, for that matter, the anxiety of influence?
The omniscient god of the brackets isnt the only voice in Portos ear.
And then theres Hennepin the new guy at the bar.
Kinda hot?Almostordered the Thai sausage (D-bag potential, scoffs Doug).
Benson must have worked in food service at some point.
Only the servers in[PORTO], the ones behind the bar, have names.
[PORTO]is a play about guilt and pleasure.
Porto exclaims in a burst of frustration, I dont know what to do with men.
In the parlance of our day, the struggle is real.
How do we navigate the new era of feminism?
And thats where the bar comes in.
So really, you sitting alone at the bar: A Feminist Act.
You might wake him up and tell him its time to leave, suggests Gloria-Doug.
You might let him sleep and take yourself out for a lavish breakfast, muses Simone-Raphael.
Whatever you do, snaps Gloria-Doug, do not cook for him.
Its a remarkable scene: laugh-out-loud hilarious and agonizingly true.
Delete the brackets around your own person, your own desires, Benson is arguing.
Or, in the immortal words of Simone de Beauvoir, Stop being an asshole.
[PORTO]is at the McGinn-Cazale Theater through February 25.
