Tina and Amy: Last Night in Paradise at Frigid New York

We're kind of in love with FRIGID New York, an annual festival of plays that runs until Sunday, and not just because the PR person gave us free tickets to Tina and Amy: Last Night in Paradise.

We like the festival's scrapiness, the way you might bump into one of the performers while waiting in line for the bathroom or the way the performers might incorporate cleaning up the stage for the next show into their own play. As for Tina and Amy, it had its moments. Like Matt and Ben, this play looks at two famous friends before they were famous. The jokes make or break a show like this, and Tina and Amy lands more than enough ("You know who else is blonde? Hillary goddamn Clinton." "It's pronounced Rodham!") to be worth applauding. We weren't quite as taken with the effort to underscore the real conflicts at the center of the story --- female friends being pulled apart by different life trajectories, ambition colliding with reality --- via a meta-theatrical turn in which the cast's own lives bubble to the surface, but that's a minor complaint when stacked against the show's elbow-grease charms.

photo: thanks