Review: A Rant of One's Own

By Kelly Kohlman 

A Haiku:

Growing up is hard.
Relationships can hurt us.
It gets better, though.

Angsty haiku, silly songs, and cheating boyfriends abound in I Kissed Your Boyfriend: Another Feminist Rant, Laura Kay’s autobiographical one-woman show, which premiered Off-Broadway last October as part of the 2016 United Solo Theatre Festival. Kay and her all-female team have revived the show for a second round at the PIT Underground running August 24-26.

For about an hour, Kay guides us through her personal history of perspectives on love and sex, from childhood to adolescence and on to young adulthood. She does so by roaming around her unpacked bedroom, which is filled with cardboard boxes, most of them labeled with the names of men who had done her wrong (and a few with fun descriptors such as  “Assholes”).  As she literally unpacks each box, she figuratively unpacks her associated baggage in a procession of anecdotes of growing up and self-discovery, from her first kiss to her #Feminist awakening.
Kay’s likeability and candidness make a pleasant evening out of her diary entry-style script. To whom she intends to be speaking throughout the piece is unclear, but her heart is laid bare, her storytelling is earnest, and her charm is undeniable.
Chelsea B. Lockie’s direction incorporates welcome movement and use and space into the piece, and the original songs sprinkled throughout, composed by Jeff Gorcyca, are a fun and irreverent addition.
I Kissed Your Boyfriend: Another Feminist Rant is just that, a rant in long form, primarily about no-good lowdown men, packed tight full of experiences that many young women today can relate to. The hopeful takeaway from the drudgery being that though love and sex and gender politics can drive us to our breaking point, we are all, in fact, going to be okay.