The Scandal!
Written by Caitlin Fahey of Theater Talk’s New Theater Corps
Published December 15, 2008

From the moment the young Amy Patrice Golden enters from the back of the intimate Red Room to her final words, the audience is wholly enticed by The Scandal. In this one-woman show by Kristen Kosmas, Pink (Golden) unravels the stories of a myriad of characters, including Pink's mother, Hope; father, Seven; best friend, the bed-hopping Gogo; mysterious-stranger-turned boyfriend Radio; and the other townspeople in a tiny, quiet, desert town. Ms. Golden’s performance, directed by Courtney Sale, allows the complex Pink to be both witty and sad, neurotic and logical, loopy and insightful. She tells the stories of her father's suicide, her mother's obsession with furniture, and her own childhood traumas with childlike naiveté. She is wide-eyed and passionate, and yet, the scandal in question stems from her own violent rage.

Many factors suggest that "the scandal" will be Pink's suicide: the bright red dress designed by Peggy Vivino, Pink's admission that she always planned to die by drowning at the age of thirty-three. James Carney's stark set, consisting only of two hanging frames and a wooden piano adds to the timelessness of the story, and Pink seems to be trapped in limbo, reliving the events that pushed her to do what she eventually did. However, the ending is deeper than that, divulging not only Pink’s fate, but also that of all the characters.

Ms. Kosmas's script is beautifully literary, and poetic at times. The focus is drawn to relationships between opposites, such as the virginal Pink versus the overtly-sexual Gogo and the use of elements fire and water as tools for destruction. . The lack of technology in the piece allows Pink to develop a relationship with the environment and to take careful notice of even the most minute details. More importantly, it allows her to remember them. Though The Scandal is a one-woman-show, Ms. Golden's execution allows the secondary characters to come to life in this gripping piece. Anyone who has ever been pushed to the edge, who has loved a person despite his or her eccentric tendencies, or who has been both terrified and elated to fall in love will identify with and applaud Ms. Kosmas's look at life.

Everybody's Talking
Written by Doug Strassler of Off-Off Online
Published December 12, 2008

Amy Patrice Golden is a luminous and immensely talented actress. Her look is a distinct – not to mention distinguished – combination of both Oscar-winner Cate Blanchett and erstwhile adult actress Traci Lords, which is appropriate; Golden possesses a deep reservoir of talent with just a hint of a naughty side.

This makes Golden perfectly cast as Pink, the narrator and subject of Kristen Kosmas’ The Scandal!, a fascinating look at depression, suicide, and small-town life presented by the Horse Trade Theater Group and The Management in the East Village’s Red Room. Director Courtney Sale guides this show as a smart and stirring character study with a winning combination of humor and pathos.

Pink’s world is essentially a cocoon, in which she knows little about herself and even less about others. Her friends are not necessarily the best influences on her decisions. Her mother is aloof and judgmental, choosing to ignore the absence of Pink’s father, who has killed himself. His specter continues to haunt Pink, who treads around the darker edges of life.

Pink explains fairly early in this one-woman show that she has designs to drown herself at the age of 33 by weighing herself down with rocks in the river, Virginia Woolf-style. However, even the best-laid, most maudlin plans go awry. The scandal of the title is an entirely different event altogether.

Golden spends Scandal! accounting for what led to the event Pink describes. She meets Radio, a mysterious stranger. Her attraction to him leads to a complicated relationship that forces Pink to re-evaluate her beliefs about herself and her dealings with others. The thoughts that the character weighs may be dark, but her account is certainly illuminating.

It is unclear whether it was a choice on the part of Kosmas, Golden, or Sale, but Golden cleverly refrains from mimicking the different vocal styles of each character she portrays. While this choice is occasionally confusing (it can be hard to remember who is who), it turns Scandal into something more than the typical one-actor show. Golden isn’t playing multiple characters; she instead plays Pink, and all other characters the audience sees are played as Pink’s interpretation of them, filtering them through her own limited subjective sensibilities.

Take, for example, when Pink encounters Radio. Instead of merely recounting their conversation, she repeats their dialogue for the audience. Then, Pink summarizes the encounter with her own skewed recollection of events, allowing audience members to observe both the gross and the net capture of the encounter. Strokes like this are not difficult to create, and yet they add an enormous amount of character dimension to the play.

Golden masters these transitions brilliantly, etching in those character dimensions. Her performance is not only heartfelt, it is also extremely well-disciplined, navigating Kosmas’ shifts in events and tone carefully. She holds the audience in her thrall with a tautly focused performance. And her delivery is pure poetry; I only wish that her perfect cadences were not always drowned out by Jennifer Hudson, The Cars and the other musical artists being blasted by the KGB Bar directly beneath the Red Room.

Nonetheless, Golden gives a performance to remember in Scandal. Contrary to its own name, Kosmas has fashioned a play that should be remembered not for anything sensational, but for its substance. It is a careful, soulful journey through one woman’s mind with a star who proves that any choice of hers, even silence, can be Golden.

RetroVision Media Recommends The Scandal!
Written by Lee “The Cool Guy”
Published December 11, 2008

Amy Patrice Golden provided intense energy to the words of playwright Kristen Kosmas while augmenting Courtney Sale’s direction with an intuitive acting skill that converged to create a perfect blend for “The Scandal.” These three women have come together to on this one woman show to reveal a captivating tale of a small town girl, beset with small town issues and how she darkly deals with them in a big time way.

Pink, burned out at too tender an age, as a result of the loss of her father from a hangman’s noose of his own making, a mother living in denial and a motley crew of friends harboring their own bleak concerns, fashions a solution to solve all her troubles. But living in Podunk USA can present unique problems to anyone trying to set their life aflame to quell their pain without causing a stir amongst the locals.  That is the backdrop for this engaging story that consumes a young, assuming and innocent woman desperately trying to understand her world and the world at large.

Kristen Kosmas’ character Pink is written with such depth that the audience will find itself empathetic and sympathetic to the plight of her protagonist right from the opening dialog. Kosmas waste precious little time letting the viewer get to know Pink and what is driving her near manic mania. From our purview, it was the playwright’s clever stagecraft and pacing that avoided the pitfall of early boredom that often plagues one person shows. In our opinion, The Scandal is a production more than worth the price of a ticket as well as your time and attendance.

The Horse Trade Theatre Group & The Management is currently presenting this dramatic and darkly comedic one woman show much to the appreciation and approval of the lower eastside’s Indie theatre fans. If you have a chance to catch some Black Box Theatre this weekend, The Scandal is a must see performance.