This much is certain: Her name is Julia Masli, and the show she’s brought to Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company after it became a buzzy, sold-out hit at last summer’s Edinburgh Festival Fringe consists largely of her briefly interviewing audience members and trying to come up with an on-the-spot solution for whatever is troubling them. “Problehhhhhhhm?” she queries, stretching out the word’s second vowel sound in a high-pitched voice that makes everything she says sound like a sigh.
“My kids make me crazy,” groused one patron at the press night performance, elaborating that “they’re very dirty and demanding.”
“I’m in love with a co-worker,” confessed another.
A guy up in the balcony said he feels burdened by a general sense of dread. (Solidarity, brother.)
Hardly quick-fix vexations. But therein lies the show’s absurdist value proposition. “I fix it,” Masli promised the woe-beset man. “I fix the world!”
Masli spent the first dozen years of her life in Estonia before her parents shipped her off to boarding school in England. Later, she went to France to study clowning under Philippe Gaulier, a (then-)septuagenarian master whose famous pupils include Sacha Baron Cohen.
That Masli trained with the instructor who begot Borat is one reason to believe the slightly scrambled syntax of her spoken English is a comedic affectation — not that there’s much chitchat in her performance, served in a Fringe-sized portion of 70 minutes, give or take. In fact, it takes several moments after Masli enters the house, which is as suffused with blue smoke as a scene in an ’80s Tony Scott movie, for her to utter a decipherable word. Before that, she moans and coos as she prowls the stage, like an infant deciphering the mysteries of speech.
Piercing the artificial haze is the beam of a flashlight mounted several inches above Masli’s head, part of a bizarre helmet that’s covered in wires and has what looks like a part of a brass instrument stuck to the back of it. It reminded me of the costumes from Marc Caro and Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s surreal sci-fi movie “The City of Lost Children.” The mannequin leg she wears on her left arm reminded me of nothing; it just sui-generis weird. Masli earned her first round of applause by managing to pick up a microphone using the artificial appendage’s inanimate foot.
Soon enough, she’s sticking that foot, and that mic, in the faces of those who, presumably, look most in need of her assistance. Her invitation — “Problehhhhhm?” — occasionally summoned volunteers who seemed a little too eager to pitch in. The guy who said he was in love with a co-worker, for instance, was brought onstage with another person who was assigned to play the object of his crush; he was then instructed to practice unburdening himself of his feelings. “I’m feeling groovy,” he said to the stranger Masli had seated across from him. “Do you, likewise, feel groovy?” Later, he interrupted the show to offer some unsolicited, if heartfelt, advice to a pair of Masli’s other patients, suggesting they begin each day with a healthy breakfast and some exercise. Pfft. You could get that kind of crackpot advice from a medical professional.
In the noble tradition of Mr. Miyagi teaching his unwitting young charge the basics of martial arts via the wax-on, wax-off method, Masli’s remedies often take the form of craft projects: One “volunteer” was tasked with making a garland of flowers for another. The dread-experiencing man was given a hammer and a workbench and encouraged, for some reason, to repair a broken chair. (There was a similar chair suspended high above the stage, suggesting some metaphorical significance on the part of the furniture.) It took him several minutes to get comfortable banging away while Masli continued the show, but the loud, distracting hammering was funny, and the way Masli pretended not to hear it was, too.
That’s not to say she put everyone to work. When a mother complained of exhaustion, Masli simply guided the woman to a bed she wheeled out of the wings, gently removed the woman’s shoes, covered her eyes with a handkerchief and invited her to rest. Another guy was encouraged to cleanse the world of wickedness — by taking a shower onstage, which he did. I hope the water was warm.
As with the credentials of a life coach, it’s fair to apply some incredulity to the fact that Masli has such varied tools/props at the ready. But you know what they say: When all you’ve got is a hammer (and a workbench, and a bed, and a bunch of flowers, and a fully functioning shower), every problem looks like a nail (or a busted chair, or sleep deprivation, or barren soil, or a lack of hygiene).
I’m agnostic on the likelihood of Masli untangling the Gordian knot that is your life, but bullish that you’ll have a grand, and very silly, old time watching her try.
Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha, through Aug. 4 at Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company in Washington. Approximately 70 minutes without intermission. woollymammoth.net.
