How do we face the apocalyptic horrors of climate change? If you’re Stacey Gross, the Fresno, California, TV weather reporter at the center of Brian Watkins’ frenetically funny new one-woman play Weather Girl, you stare down a camera with feathered blond hair and thick makeup, an upbeat stream of banter, and copious quantities of hidden alcohol that you guzzle from your trusty Stanley Tumbler. Stacey is a singular creation, a native Californian whose perky persona masks with a good deal of trauma from her upbringing in a foster home and her occasional encounters with her drug-addled, unhoused mother. She makes you reconsider the plastic figures we so often see on local news — and wonder about what hidden depths of anger and weirdness might like beneath all that caked-on MAC foundation.
You can see why the show became a hit at last year’s Edinburgh Fringe, and also why producer Francesca Moody is developing the project as a Netflix limited series following her success with previous Fringe phenomenons like Fleabag and Baby Reindeer. All three share a certain dark comedy DNA addressing serious topics in a lighthearted, sometimes absurdist way where the dramatic bits creep up on you between the punchlines.
Like Phoebe Waller-Bridge in Fleabag, Julia McDermott brings a convincing surface polish to the title role even as her character wobbles in her high heels and form-fitting hot-pink dress. Her training in broadcast TV allows her to maintain a steady banter through even the most awkward situations. When reporting on California’s ongoing drought or a deadly wildfire that’s consumed a house and the family of five inside, she tosses back to the chipper crew in the studio with: “Save some of that casserole for me.” She lures us in with her camera-ready glibness, but also with witty confessional asides: “I can’t hold this smile much longer and the flames are melting my makeup but we’re not allowed to move cuz they want this shot for clickbait and it’s getting hotter and soon there’s an enormous amount of sweat that’s pooling in my spanx.”
But there’s something off about Stacey, and the cracks begin to appear almost immediately when she responds to an unheard joke from the morning-show news desk with, “Well that’d be pretty tough for me Larry: I grew up with foster parents… Sorry totally misheard what you said there.” The glitches in her composure become more frequent after a series of incidents: a promotion to a larger-market station in Phoenix that prompts an unusual response (“I’m gonna murder you guys”) that her bosses take as a joke; an encounter with her estranged mother in the parking lot of an El Pollo Loco fast-food joint where mom claims powers to conjure water out of thin air; and a disastrous date with a tech bro who has a “sociopathically spotless” home and a bizarre willingness to let his tipsy love interest get behind the wheel of one of his fancy sports cars.
Isabella Byrd’s simple but effective set and lighting design enhances the production by seamlessly shifting between multiple locations — including a TV studio featuring a green-screen weather map — without ever going literal. The approach makes sense given how the story shifts more fantastical as it goes along. Stacey’s unraveling culminates in an on-air meltdown of epic proportions. On one level, this seems like a plausible climax to our heroine’s growing anxiety about putting a happy face on increasingly dire weather-related news, especially after her bosses urge her to downplay wildfire evacuation orders lest they offend viewers resistant to government officials telling them what to do or the threat of bad news: “They don’t want to hear that firefighters are out of water,” she’s told. But it also shines bright TV lights on the improbability of many of the threads in Stacey’s story. If she’s this much of a hot mess, how has she been able to hold things together for so long?
Tyne Rafaeli’s brisk direction helps disguise the infelicities of the script, particularly a descent into magic realism that seems too convenient. McDermott’s performance is so fluid it could snap years of drought with torrential downpours. She’s a beguiling motormouth who responds to doubts about her chosen career with a steady drizzle of words: “I’m a fluffer, I’m a hype man, I’m a used car salesman selling a world we can’t even have.” We could all use a deliciously messed-up Weather Girl to deliver some hard truths and perhaps the hint of a miracle. ★★★★☆
WEATHER GIRL
St. Ann’s Warehouse, Brooklyn
Running time: 70 minutes (with no intermission)
Tickets on sale through Oct. 12 for $59 to $79
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