Fly in the Fridge

In this remarkable one-woman show, Karin de le Penha plays Emily, the author of this autobiographical piece. The Fly in the Fridge tells Emily’s story of her easy slide into drugs and prostitution, a victim of the seedier side of the Sixties subculture in New York City, and of her struggle to reclaim the woman subsumed by addiction. It may be an unpromising premise, typical of the overworked misery memoir genre, but through its relentless invention and de la Penha’s captivating performance, The Fly in the Fridge surpasses all expectations. Recounting Emily Minowitz’s story, de la Penha plays a host of characters, from Emily herself to her sister, her parents, her dealer and her pimp. In doing so she demonstrates an astonishing range, and an enviable ability to move swiftly between extremes of emotion, from desperate to playful in a trice. Her performance is a masterclass in physical theatre, inhabiting every one of her characters with a relentless intensity, looking us straight in the eye as if daring us to avert our gaze. The play’s most lyrical and tender moments – beacons of a fighting spirit amidst the unremitting dankness of Emily’s existence – are centred on the ‘fly’ of the title. Remembering a client – a john by any other name – who told her you could keep a fly in a refrigerator, becalmed for the stretch of its natural life, Emily thinks of her addiction as a fly inside her: always there, but quiescent against her determination to forge a more hopeful life. The Fly in the Fridge is raw, confessional, important theatre, and every strained sinew of de la Penha’s performance does it perfect justice.