This is Baby Doll @ TAP Gallery

This is Baby Doll @ TAP Gallery

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Posted 2012-10-08 by Lauren Nolanfollow

Thu 04 Oct 2012 - Sat 13 Oct 2012

Raw, intense and inescapable are the words that come to mind when I think of This Is Baby Doll . Adapted from the Tennessee Williams play, Baby Doll, this performance did more than do it justice, it reinvented it.

Performed at TAP Gallery , you can't help getting thrown in the deep end by how intimate the theatre is. Feeling like I had stepped directly into Baby Doll's world, I sat like a fly on the wall and watched the story unfold.



From the moment the play starts, the audience comes face to face with a confronting scenario. Right away we discover that Baby Doll, a 19-year-old southern sweetheart is married to an aging, dirty old man by the name of Archie. Baby Doll, won't consummate her marriage with Archie until she is 20. This causes uncomfortable sexual grooming between this older man and a young girl who still has the innocence of a child.

Archie and Baby Doll's parent-child relationship is beyond dysfunctional. Almost immediately I fell in love with Baby Doll. Her character is perfect protagonist, stealing our hearts from the get-go. The rawness of the performance is what gives it such texture and encapsulates the audience so wholly.



The story takes a turn when a cotton factory (conveniently Archie's competitor) burns down. This causes Silva Vacarro, who owns the burnt down factory to enter the story. Siva is young, handsome and masculine, something Baby Doll seems utterly affected by. When told to entertain him by her husband, Baby Doll finds herself under the manipulative and watchful eye of this stranger.

Silva uses his confidence and way with words to pull information about Archie's involvement in the factory fire from Baby Doll. Her failed attempts to retract her verbal vomit leaves her flustered in more ways than one.



Encompassed with the knowledge that Archie destroyed something of his, Silva takes a form of revenge that I'm sure he sees as an-eye-for-an-eye.

This Is Baby Doll is mesmerizing from start to finish. It takes you on a rollercoaster ride of emotion and ends with a pinnacle of intensity. Brilliantly performed and exceptionally adapted, this play will have your heart pounding till the very last fierce second.

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!date 04/10/2012 -- 13/10/2012
%wnsydney
202334 - 2023-06-16 05:15:08

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