Reviews

It's genuinely chilling when you enter the theater for Freakshow and see Morgana Shaw perched atop a table – armless and legless.

Core Performance Manufactory, the brainchild of Elizabeth Ware, specializes in the offbeat but literarily ambitious. The company has been relatively inactive in recent years but over the next few months will participate in this summer's Festival of Independent Theatres again as well as producing this play by Carson Kreitzer.

Freakshow at first seems a procession of stately but grotesque monologues. Eventually, however, it turns into a full-fledged play, a kind of fable about the satisfactions as well as perils of being fabulous, or at least spectacularly odd.

Ms. Shaw plays Amalia, the star attraction of a traveling tent show. The former star, the Dog-Faced Girl (Lulu Ward), looks after Amalia lovingly, feeding her and grooming her since she can't care for herself. Matthew (Daniel R. States), the guy who cleans up after the elephants, is Amalia's secret lover. But she's actually smitten with the Pinhead (M. Shane Hurst). Or is it the ringmaster (Kent Williams) she has really set her cap for?

The romantic subplot involves Aquaboy (Sachin Patel), who has grown gills after years of swimming in his tank. A local farm girl (Leslie Patrick) falls in love with him and wants him to escape and run away with her.

Ms. Ware's frequent collaborator, avant-garde musical improviser Kim Corbet, was to the side of the stage, snoring theatrically, as people entered to gaze at Ms. Shaw at Thursday's performance. He accompanies and comments on the entire action, setting gongs to vibrate and plucking strings and puffing into his trusty tuba.

All the cast members, especially the women, sustain Ms. Kreitzer's tricky tone throughout. But this is really Ms. Shaw's show. Amalia lets the audience know right away that she realizes she is beautiful, and that she is a very sexual being. Ms. Shaw's entire performance is like seeing the Venus de Milo come to life – except Ms. Shaw covers that torso of hers in cloth of gold. And, of course, lacks four, rather than two, limbs.

PLAN YOUR LIFE Through May 17 at the Bath House Cultural Center. Runs 100 mins. $20. 214-893-3009, www.coreperformancemanufactory.com.