Proximity to fame can do a number on one’s self esteem. That’s the big takeaway from Nicole Travolta Is Doing Alright, a gently comedic one-woman show by a personable and talented thirtysomething who has mostly struggled to replicate the Hollywood success of her world-famous uncle. “A nepo niece is not the same as a nepo baby,” she tells us with characteristic bluntness. “However, I would be a phenomenal nepo baby. I would murder that shit.”
No doubt. Though her parents met on the Paramount lot (where dad, one of John’s brothers, worked as an executive), Nicole Travolta spent much of her childhood in “the armpit of the San Fernando valley” before moving to Florida as a teen. Still, she was a ham with a gift for mimicry and a burning desire to pursue a career as an actress. While working as a spray tanner in L.A. to pay the bills, she landed a few one-episode guest spots on early-2010s sitcoms like Two and a Half Men and The Middle and a three-episode gig as Charlie Sheen’s scantily clad girlfriend on Anger Management. She offers a typically straightforward assessment of kissing her nepo-baby co-star on the latter: “His mouth tasted like a moldy shed.”
Travolta is a winsome over-sharer, opening up about her short-lived marriage to a much-older guy as well as a serious shopping addiction that led her to rack up tens of thousands of dollars in credit card debt. After spray-tanning what she describes as a “fuck ton of pussy,” perhaps it’s only natural that she’s basically a stranger to inhibitions. But her show, which she has been developing for several years now at the Ediburgh Festival Fringe and venues across the U.S., is less a tailored suit than a piece of athleisure held together by elastic and onstage charisma. (Paula Christensen is credited as co-writer and co-director.)
Travolta can’t settle on whether she wants to focus on her own humble origin story or to dish about her brushes with the more famous folks she aspires to join one day. She admits that her director (Margarett Perry) taught her the Saturday Night Fever dance moves that she performs near the top of the show, but I longed for more stories about her bookie grandmother, the one who let her drive at age 13 and assured her that she’d be just fine because she had “great boobs.” While she delivers spot-on impressions of stars like Natasha Lyonne and Jennifer Coolidge whom she coyly suggests might have spent time in her spray-tan tent, her versions of Jennifer Aniston, Sarah Jessica Parker, and Uncle John are more of a reach.
The bigger hiccup is that you can feel Travolta’s eagerness to connect with her audience, to win us over. There’s a desperation just beneath the performer’s smooth and polished confidence that never completely dissipates. Doing Alright boasts layers of humor and charm, but they fade more quickly than store-bought tanning cream. ★★☆☆☆
NICOLE TRAVOLTA IS DOING ALRIGHT
Soho Playhouse, Off Broadway
Running time: 85 minutes (with no intermission)
Tickets on sale through May 10 for $39 to $99