“Women Laughing Alone With Salad” review by Carol Moore

 Highly Recommended **** How do you feel about salad?  As a woman sitting in the audience during a performance of “Women Laughing Alone with Salad”, you might feel compelled to ask yourself that question, especially during a rather spirited tribute to all things lettuce.  “Women Laughing Alone with Salad” is an acerbic, raucous, subversive and really funny riff on an internet blog of the same name.  4 Spotlights

Are you a woman who would be gleefully grinning at the green leafy vegetables in your lunch bowl?  Would you even be home at lunchtime, let alone chortling over your kale?  Does an ad with a picture of a woman chuckling while she crunches a carrot make you want to buy something?  Apparently advertisers must think the laughing-over-salad’ stereotype works since they use these stock images all the time.

By the way, stock images are photographs created specifically for commercial licensing.  An advertiser can purchase the rights to use stock photographs in any ad.  In 2011, Edith Zimmerman posted 18 stock photos in the feminist blog, The Hairpin, which she dubbed Women Laughing Alone With Salad.  That blog has spurred multiple memes which parody the theme. 

“Women Laughing Alone with Salad” opens with three women sitting on a bench laughing while eating salad in various seductive poses.  The story is about Guy (Japhet Balaban), a fairly typical clueless male, and the women in his life – his mother, his girlfriend and his fantasy.

Guy loves Sandy (Jennifer Engstrom), his mother, but she’s getting on his last nerve.  She started out as an activist, but she’s morphed into a fashionista who is willing to try anything and everything in her quest to stay young, and damn the consequences.  Her uterus falls out, oh well, just put it back.  Critters in a bucket are eating more than the dead skin on her hands, oh well, didn’t need those fingers anyway.

Across a crowded room in a club, Guy makes eye contact with his fantasy.  Meredith (Echaka Agba), a full-figured womanly woman who is not afraid to flaunt her size, sends Guy the signal, she’s interested – at least until his skinny girlfriend, shows up.

Tori (Daniella Pereira) is probably anorexic, definitely bulimic.  When she comes out of the bathroom, Guy complains about her vomit breath.  She says she brushed her teeth, he says she needs to brush her tongue.  Guy introduces Tori to Meredith, suggesting they go to his favorite restaurant, but he knows that Tori won’t eat anything.  She says might order something, then proceeds to recite the entire menu, but she’ll actually order a salad and eat one leaf of lettuce.  Guy invites Meredith home with him and Tori, which leads to some awkwardly funny moments, before they settle down for a threesome.

The gender-busting second act takes place several years later.

“Women Laughing Alone with Salad” is suitable for adults.  It includes nudity, sexual situations, language, and explicit discussions about gender and sex.

“Women Laughing Alone with Salad” runs through April 29^th at Theater Wit, 1229 W. Belmont, Chicago.  Parking is available for a fee in Theater Wit’s lot behind the restaurant across the street.  Valet parking is also available on weekends.

Running time is 2 hours, 10 minutes, with an intermission. Performances are:

Thursday through Saturday at 8:00 pm

Sunday at 3:00 pm.

Tickets range from $12-$70.  Tickets for women are discounted to correct for the 79% wage gap between men and women in Illinois.  FYI (773) 975-8150 or www.theaterwit.org.

To see what others are saying, visit www.theatreinchicago.com, go to Review Round-Up and click at “Women Laughing Alone With Salad”