REVIEW: seven methods of killing kylie jenner (Woolly Mammoth)
Preview: This being my first Woolly Mammoth show since early 2022, when I saw their pre-Broadway run of A Strange Loop, I was excited to see what sort of boundary-pushing piece they’d put on this time. This production marks the source material’s US debut, following a run in London and being brought over as a co-production of New York’s Public Theatre and Mammoth. The premise: Kylie Jenner being labeled a self-made billionaire drives Cleo into a twitter rampage, hashtagging all the ways she wishes she could get rid of Jenner, to varying degrees of violence and realism. Contrasting her as a voice of reason is her best friend Kara. As Cleo goes increasingly viral, she undergoes a cancel campaign, which reveals deep fissures in both the relationship with Kara and with herself. The plot particularly revolves around Blackness from a British point-of-view. which unfolds to reveal how the diaspora and our traumas are interconnected across oceans and between metaverses.
Acting; Tia Bannon and Leanne Henlon serve as Kara and Cleo, our two ‘tagonists, one deuter- and pro- respectively. While there was talent between the two of them, and great friendship chemistry that palpably soured over the 90 minutes of stage time, I found them…underutilized, so to speak. It felt like they were merely vehicles for a script that could arguably have been just as well-suited as poetry. I certainly was impressed with Kara’s use of French, Dutch, and Spanish, as the newscasters that would spread Cleo’s ever-increasing virality. And on the topic of Cleo, Henlon delivers tons of energy and sympathy into a character that I didn’t find agreeable most of the time. Despite how she was in the book, I still found myself wanting the best for her. What I found was pulled-off the best overall was how their relationship blurred the lines between online and in-person. While the production itself does draw these hard lines (more on that below), it was not until the end that I realized how the actors had been subtly blurring the lines between online and reality in their dialog. What started as literal uses of “W-T-F” and “S-M-HG” — which I found very cringey — by the end I realized each use was meant to have us question, as the audience, where this conflict was actually happening. 5/10
Production: Director Milli Bhatia does a good job at keeping the suspension of disbelief alive, despite small staging from Rajha Shakiry. The set consists of a small staircase platform, a trapdoor, and a large, interwoven tree of ropes that dangle what appear as unfinished nooses from their branches. No other props save for a cadaver bag and a small tumbleweed appear in the show. The blocking of our two characters ebbs and flows with energy at just the right pace, with quick jerk pivots and robotic snaps during certain internet-based scenes and lucid, loud, and angry gestures during the interpersonal tantrums. Jessica Hung Han Yun also pulls the right strings with her lighting design. Psychedelic hues flood the room to accompany the online zeigeist, and the humanistic lighting gradually cools to bluer tones as the relationship sours. I wish more was done with the lattice-tree of ropes, however; while it does lower at the climax to (almost) envelop Chloe in her darkest hour, it doesn’t, and still mostly serves as a container for a number of colorful lighting patterns that radiate like thunder during other scenes—while pretty, I again think are under utilized. 4/10
Book: This is where most of my issues lay, unfortunately. I think the message, which does cleverly relate the dangers of being chronically online, cancel culture, and the effects of colonialism, is not told in the best way. Cleo is rightfully angry about Kylie Jenner profiteering off blackness, but does not make communicating with her friend very easy for both of them. Simultaneously, Kara’s rejection of colorism being a problem within the community makes little sense given she accepts how prominent racism is in their home countries otherwise. The immaturity in the communication expressed by both characters makes for a frustrating and disheartening viewing. Granted, this can be partially excused by the end, where the viewer realizes that it was not always apparent which was real and which wasn’t; indicated by what would normally be portrayed online (being blocked on Twitter) as an IRL interaction (with great lighting storytelling once again). 3/10
VisDev: Pre-show stage is a thrust, with on-stage seating on the wings. I’m a sucker for on-stage seating, gotta be real. I was a little disappointed my tickets weren’t there, but beggars/choosers etc. 😅 Staging was minimal, just the staircase and the lattice tree. Nothing was really giving any sort of vibe, but I’m glad I got to analyze the lattice tree. What could it mean? Why are some ropes hanging down? Will this move at some point? It was a lot for a focal point of the small stage and I liked it. However, the real kicker of pre-show advertizing was the zine they included with every program that felt very in-universe, like a twitter user today could have made. However, instead of in-universe context and commentary, it served as a primer of how anti-blackness has perpetrated itself into society — specifically via the Kardashians — using the story of Sara Baartman, an enslaved South African who in her 26 years on Earth was tossed around Europe as a eugenicist play-thing. I had never heard the details of this story until now, and it was quite enraging how much of her plight still parallels today. In addition to telling her story, it also included a decent translation of common British internet slang, particularly among Black Britons. Honestly, I could really use that for the future as a hobby linguist. African American Vernacular English (AAVE) is so unique and isolated from the Commonwealth diaspora that sometimes you can forget the influence British English has elsewhere that it doesn’t here. All forms of the Black English dialectical diaspora are so cool and unique, and Woolly should be commended for putting in the effort to educate on it when they didn’t necessarily need to. 8/10
Verdict: Strong, emotional performances can only take a weak script so far, even if overall it expresses a decent cautionary tale about being chronically online. Poignant themes of colonialism and the greater Black diaspora are on full display, which make it an educational, if not entertaining, night at the theatre.
