Playwright: Mierka Girten
At: Mookie Jam at Storefront,
66 E. Randolph
Phone: (312) 742-8497; $15
Runs through: Nov. 22
Debilitating diseases—like multiple sclerosis —can be such a drag. Hardly the stuff of sparkling entertainment. Who's going to sit around and laugh at such horrors as incontinence, loss of mental acuity, lameness, and more? Well, for one, playwright and performer Mierka Girten, who has crafted this funny, wise, and warm chronicle of her journey about coming to terms with acquiring multiple sclerosis when she was still a graduate student at DePaul. The wonderful thing about With or Without Wings—the title refers to a Frida Khalo quote, 'Feet—why do I need them when I have wings to fly?'—is that Girten is a survivor. There's not one moment in this fast-paced and polished one-woman show that engages in self-pity. Girten's strength alone would be enough to make this a worthwhile reason to see With or Without Wings, but Girten offers more.
For one, she's a very capable talent. The show, adapted from Girten's journals when she was first diagnosed with MS as a grad student, never shows its seams, taking us on a horrifying, harrowing, yet often hysterically funny trip toward accepting an illness that could snatch away all her dreams, and make her nearly helpless. Girten morphs into key players in both her fantasy and real-life: a Donna Reed '50s housewife type with an impossibly perfect life; her ex-hippie mother back in Cincinnati (Girten calls it the 'Paris of the Midwest' in one of many zingy one-liners); an unintelligible psychotherapist; and many more.
Girten opens up to her audience, showing not only the progression of her disease and battle with it (she's currently in remission), but also detailing her life as an artist and dreams of being an actress (starting out in childhood with mime class and wanting to be the world's best 'Annie'). So, when Girten begins to feel an odd numbness in her leg during a dance class, and loses control of her movements on a crucial first date with a dream man, it becomes all the more heart wrenching when she is diagnosed with MS. Before Girten could find out what was wrong with her, she sought help from other quarters, all of them less conventional than Western medicine. She details this search comically, taking us through attempts at a cure through Tai Chi, a chiropractor, and a Chinese herbalist who had her drink 'mud.' She lets us see how the disease reduced her and how if affected those around her (from sympathy to apathy). We see her slow acceptance of her disease as she sheds her aspirations and drops out of grad school, to enter the 'fast-paced world of department store fragrances.' She tries to push away the man who loves her. And finally, she almost makes the ultimate sacrifice when she attempts suicide. Her dream of flight during this near-death experience may have brought her back.
It's a grim story, but one that is immensely likable because of Girten's humor and her refusal to be a victim. It's what got her through and it's what gets us through, too.