Theatre in Review: Watch Me Walk (Soho Rep/Peter Jay Sharp Theatre) Anne Gridley is one angry woman. To be sure, she has plenty to be mad about; at times during this autobiographical piece, part of the Under the Radar Festival, I felt that a better title for Watch Me Walk might be I'm Still Standing. Still reasonably young, she has endured a lifetime's worth of shocks to the system, leaving her psychologically tougher than the average Marine. Her onstage persona is, er, challenging: Think of a less-sunny Jackie Hoffman or Fran Lebowitz minus the tobacco and weary acceptance of the world's follies. Indeed, her tactics are strictly scorched earth, each speech a verbal napalm attack. This is off-putting at first, but the dramatic arc of Watch Me Walk -- which spares no one, least of all Gridley -- develops a strange fascination; she gambles that the truth, however awful, will prove fascinating. It's a winning bet. The title is literal: In the opening sequence, Gridley paces the stage, something that doesn't come naturally since she suffers from Hereditary Spastic Paraplegia, or HSP. Walking, she says, "feels like you're thigh deep in mud. Walking through mud, dragging it. Flinging it, you know?" Actually, flinging mud is something of a Gridley specialty. One physical therapist, she notes, "told me that I should smile more when I walk...It was a woman, so I didn't punch her in the face." She reserves a special level of acid for strangers who stop her on the street, advising her to try turmeric, acupuncture, or oiling her legs. And she has a full repertoire of snappy answers to stupid questions from the well-intentioned but ill-informed. My favorite: "What happened to you?" "My parents were anti-vaxxers." Even more relevant: when someone patronizingly notes, "God bless you," she snarls, "God did this to me!" Gridley's default delivery, a furious sneer, can be taxing, especially while she relentlessly paces the stage. Also, her singing can be a trial. At the same time, her nonstop candor is disarming, then riveting. Each comment seems part of a larger survival strategy: How can you not be charmed by her collection of canes, named after (among others) James Turrell (because it lights), Tina Turner, Dorothy Parker, Robert Frost, Gertrude Stein, Sylvia Plath, Dashiell Hammett, Minnesota Fats, and Victoria Beckham? And you can't say Gridley doesn't have theatrical flair: She appears in an Annie Warbucks getup and wig to excoriate a medical industry that has little interest in "orphan" diseases that affect too few people to be profitable. Later, she dresses up as "Dumn Dumn -- Anne Gridley's Degenerating Upper Motor Neuron -- a dissociative theatrical persona invented for your amusement and to give the playwright a healthy dose of clinical distance." (The inventive costumes are by Lux Haac.) And she goes full Broadway, complete with a big scenic reveal courtesy of designer Jian Jung and lighting designer Kate McGee, for a little ditty that begins, "Nobody's better at hatin' on me/Hatin' on me but me/'Cause I'm the biggest ableist of them all!" Along the way. Gridley has some choice words for a health care system that delivers no solutions and provides disability insurance that becomes inactive anytime she earns more than $1,900 a month. And she fearlessly dives into her family's astonishingly dysfunctional past -- including unexpected deaths and homelessness -- aggravated by the progress of HSP across multiple generations. (Forget about sympathy: When Gridley was diagnosed with HSP, her mother said, "I'm sorry you were born.") The darker Watch Me Walk becomes, the more inextricable its grip. Indeed, Gridley stops at nothing in turning a life marked by misfortune -- did I mention her history of substance abuse? -- into a theatrical extravaganza. She is aided by her two "Adonises" -- Keith Johnson, who embodies every doctor who has ever treated her like a specimen rather than a human being, and Alex Gibson, who delivers "The Ha Ha Ha History of Disability," a singalong that, in its falsely cheerful way, lays bare centuries of cruelty toward the disability engraved in the thinking of Western civilization. It's the perfect capper to an evening that amounts to a scalding wake-up call. Under Eric Ting's confident direction, this three-ring indictment only becomes more exhilarating as it goes along. (The design includes solid sound and inventive video, including some alarmingly doctored family photos, courtesy of Tei Blow.). Gridley may be the most fearless performer onstage in New York just now, even taking part in a choreographed sequence that climaxes with falling into her Adonises' arms. Watch Me Walk, leaves one almost breathless with admiration for its creators' knack for turning personal disaster into scaldingly truthful theatre. By the finale, another choreographed sequence (by Asli Bulbul) performed with a defiant gusto, it has become blindingly clear that Gridley's rage is really a rage to live. --David Barbour 
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