Chris received this from a patron who attended the opening weekend of Crazy Enough…

Accolades for “Crazy Enough”
By Marty Mitchell
Marty_Mitchell_99@yahoo.com
April 8, 2009

A tall slender silhouette moves fluidly to the microphone on an unadorned stage. As the lights go up we are surprised to see that the figure is a woman, hands shoved into pockets, dark hoodie draped from her shoulders. In short order, we learn that she is going to tell us about how it was to grow up as a crazy woman’s daughter. Then she sings, and the ragged pain in her fine voice transports us into the first chapter of an epic tale that is larger than the life of Storm Large, Stumptown’s diva and Super Nova chanteuse.

This translucent-skinned blonde is possessed of a raw honesty that strips us to the bone as we sit in the dark under the spell of her huge emotions. The little girl who smashes the ceramic kittens in a saccharinely sweet counselor’s office awakens the same unruly child in all of us, who, as children wondered darkly, what it would be like to stand up and shout something blasphemous in church, or to tell the teacher that his breath stank. In her ravings on stage, Storm fans the flame of self-doubt that flickers in each of us, whispering, “Am I crazy?”

C-R-A-Z, Storm howls, and we, too are howling at the unspoken injustices of childhood, the tears, the alter-ego mutterings each of us has indulged in the bathroom mirror, the huge, unrecognized sorrows and the insatiable need to be loved.

Her gorgeous contralto draws us even closer, beckoning us to see in her naked honesty the stark reality of our own pathos. She is too big, too loud, too opinionated, too vociferous, too beautiful for her own life. She grasps, unbelieving, for comprehension when she learns that her stature makes men feel that their penises are too small. This cavorting, brilliant songster somehow navigates the tossing sea of her own feelings about this – feelings that wash over her face in a million distinct expressions – staggers under the weight of it, then rebounds with a joyful, huge, playful, wonderful anthem, roaring, “My vagina is eight miles wide! Everybody can come inside!”

In the end, after taking us down into the narrowing world of heroin addiction and making us writhe with her in the throes of withdrawal, Storm Large decides to celebrate her own deliriously weird self. She chooses her own crazy life, its labyrinthine alleys of disappointment, its mundane realities, and, well, its possibilities for a new, blue-eyed lover. We are left breathless, standing in the dark, weaving in the shriek of whistles and the clatter of applause.

Crazy Enough is bigger than Stumptown or the life of a girl-turned-woman in a family with a bloodline of mental illness. It is a hero’s tale of Homeric proportions that deserves to be played in S.F., in LA, Seattle, Boston, New York, London, Paris. It is Everyman’s Odyssean journey to selfhood told with compelling honesty that peels back the flesh of superficiality to reveal beautiful white bones, tough sinew and an enormously galloping heart. With a dozen or so powerful songs for a facile contralto, arrangements for piano, bass, drums and guitar, and a chorus of do-wop boys, this piece is bound to be sought after by many producers, and the lead part will be a golden prize.

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