Carrie Fisher's Wishful Drinking

Carrie Fisher's Wishful Drinking
Seattle Rep

April 2 - May 3

by Leez Wright

In her one-woman autobiographical tell-all tale, “Wishful Drinking,” Carrie takes us through all the various crises in her life and the characters who have joined her on her incredible journey, with humour but with no trace of revenge or vindictiveness. She is open and honest about her mental illness and her alcoholism without ever belittiling the seriousness of either condition. Yet she is funny. And charming.

Having spent plenty of time in the dark side, Carrie Fisher has no compunction about delivering a crushing blow to girls (and boys) who grew up idolizing those gravity-defying locks of Princess Leia -- she hated them. After donning a wig of the infamous buns herself, she uses a male audience member to verify her claim that no one could look good in them. Having insisted that my own mother routinely style my elementary school hair after the space goddess, my heart pounded in angry protest at her assertion.

But rest assured, for the duration of Fisher's frenetic, breezily personal performance, the jokes are mostly on her. And they are in no short supply. From her celebrity-royalty upbringing ("They were the Brad Pitt and Jennifer Aniston of their day," Fisher says of her parents, for those not well-versed in the gossip climate of Golden Age Hollywood) to her space-royalty persona ("Leia follows me like a vague smell," she remarks), Fisher tosses off brief, hilarious anecdotes with the sharp comic timing befitting a woman of her entertainment industry pedigree. She skilfully neither idolises Hollywood lifestyle nor does she gracelessly and ungratefully destroy it.

Smoking cigarettes on a simple stage featuring little more than a comfy recliner and an armchair, Fisher feeds us her amusing firsthand encounters with some of the biggest names in entertainment as though we were all guests at her fantasy dinner party. Iconic figures like Paul Simon, Bob Dylan, and George Lucas pass through her life's stories with frequency, but never does she alienate. Despite formative years that for most of us might as well have been in outer space, the Fisher we're presented seems entirely real and accessible. And oh so human.

This is no doubt due to the striking frankness with which she discusses her most personal demons, ranging from bipolar disorder to her variety of addictions. Not content to simply cherry pick the obviously comedic material on the surface of her life, Fisher finds richer jokes by mining darker places, from the dissolution of her marriage to the absence of her famous father. These bits, uproarious in their own right, resonate even more due to their unflinchingly raw realism.

If the show falters at all, it is when Fisher relies on tired comic conventions, such as burlesque style audience humiliation. But in a way, it serves to bring the rest of us closer to her world, and she is reasonably tame with her victims. Those jokes, perhaps also a product of her old show biz upbringing, are the only instances when Fisher seems to be acting, rather than simply being. Perhaps she just needs a rest because she gives alot of herself physically during the show, and the events she recounts can't be totally painless.

Others may complain that she never lets us see her at her most vulnerable -- even a segment about her good friend dying in her bed is played strictly for laughs -- but this show is not constructed to accommodate tragic, or even somber forays into her past. Nor is it designed to accumulate sympathy for her. As Fisher herself says, at some point in the healing process, even horrible events become funny -- how fortunate for her, and us, that she has reached that stage.

You don't need to have a biographical knowledge of Fisher's life to get most of the humour. It is sculpted to be inclusive not exclusive.

Wishful Drinking is a very funny story, told with star quality, but also with dignity and many a laugh.