No matter how bad your editorial job is, you can always find revenge—if not through a six-figure book deal, then certainly at an off-off-Broadway theater. Wendy Weiner, who has freelanced as a copy editor at dozens of glossy publications, has taken her zingers (and grievances) to the stage. Kin to The Devil Wears Prada, her solo show dishes about the trials and tribulations of a staffer at the fictional magazine Glamorous. She’s got a whole masthead of characters to impersonate during her day at the office: a tough-talking Long Island fact checker, a snide British features editor, a repressed copy chief obsessed with proper grammar, and even that most unlikely of women’s-magazine employees, the straight guy. Clever writing, subtle acting and lively pacing enliven stereotypes with snappy lines, such as when the Long Islander opens a fact-checking call by asking, “Now, would it be accurate for us to say that you once drove your man totally crazy by eating a doughnut off his genitals? What’s that? It was a bagel?” The plot, though secondary to the characterizations, has no holes.
The Elements of Style
By Wendy Weiner
13th Street Repertory Company
Fri, Aug 12 at 8:45 p.m.; Wed, Aug 17 at 5:15 p.m.; Sun, Aug 21 at 10:45 p.m.; Wed, Aug 24 at 9:45 p.m.; Sat, Aug 27 at 5:45 p.m.