Review Roundup: WEATHER GIRL at St. Ann's Warehouse

The St. Ann's Warehouse season kicked off with the multi-award-winning Weather Girl, written by Outer Range creator Brian Watkins and directed by Tyne Rafaeli . This prescient play is a darkly funny, dizzying rampage into the soul of American strangeness. It is also a showcase of the tremendous tragicomic range of its solo performer Julia McDermott.
 
McDermott plays Stacey, a California weather girl, oversexed and underpaid. Today, her regular routine of teeth whitening, prosecco and wildfires descends into a scorched-earth catastrophe, before she discovers something that will save us all.

Let's see what the critcis had to say...
 
 
 

Melissa Rose Bernardo, New York Stage Review: The extra minutes also should help illuminate the not insignificant subplot about her mom’s paranormal ability to make water appear out of thin air—a gift that Stacey has inherited but can’t summon as easily. Her mom describes the power as “a primal kinda thing, a verdant little creature tucked up near your crotch.” Perhaps we have to see it to believe it. And let’s hope that McDermott continues playing the prosecco-swilling Stacey. Watkins (Epiphany) wrote the part for her, and it fits like a glove—or, to use an analogy Stacey would appreciate, a pair of sweaty Spanx.

Jonathan Mandell, New York Theater: “Weather Girl” has a plot of sorts, although it’s not especially detailed or what you could call linear; I’d be surprised if the Netflix series sticks to it (assuming a Netflix series actually materializes.) In a program note, Watkin explains that he wrote the play to address the question: “Why do we wreck the places we love?” He explicitly means California, and implicitly Planet Earth. In answer, he packs his play with numerous ways we are all complicit. To give one example: During the date with the tech bro, he tells her he’s “part of a startup that’s building six hundred ‘smart homes’ nearby, and I say what about the water crisis, where will they get their water, and he says I dunno someone’ll figure it out” (Is this why she crashes his car? If so, the dots aren’t directly connected.) It’s not the plot nor the points that exert the biggest pull for “Weather Girl.” It’s how Julia McDermott’s performance holds all the elements together, even as everything is flying apart.

JK Clarke, La Voce di New York: One hopes the 70-minute Weather Girl will be extended beyond its current October 12 closing date, but that would merely be for just a couple weeks. It deserves a much longer run, so hopefully, somehow, it will get it. Either way, the entire team should start picking out red carpet outfits for next spring’s Off-Broadway awards season.

Gillian Russo, New York Theatre Guide: The show ends up succeeding best as a mirror for anyone who feels like they're constantly on red-alert mode, reminding them they aren't alone in that. There is, indeed, a stormy future in the forecast. Better pack your umbrella.

Thom Geier, Culture Sauce: 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.

Average Rating: 82.0%