Maalox Moment:

Moment to Moment is no moment to remember; the viewer prays that every moment of this play will be the last. This improvisational pseudocomedy--poorly acted, plotless and pointless--has no redeeming value.

The one actress in Moment to Moment, Daena Giardella, improvises the entire show. Even though the program claims that the play is Giardella's commentary on life, her cryptic commentary makes no sense. In the first scene, two musicians play the drums and an organ for about ten minutes. They succeed only in lulling the audience to sleep.

Moment to Moment

at the Beacon Hill Playhouse

Through March 29

Giardella does sporadic handstands that are neither aesthetically appealing nor laden with symbolism. She dons ugly black leotards unbecoming of a forty-year-old woman throughout the play. Suddenly, she switches to the personality of a three year old girl in something she refers to as "regression." Attempting to show how her mother was once hard to hug, she clasps a huge wire to her chest. Most of the play seems intended only for those who have been through therapy.

At times, Giardella gets political--she does (unfunny) Norman Schwarzkopf and Clarence Thomas imitations. The one vaguely humorous line of the night came from an audience member. When Giardella offered a cigarette to a woman who had just walked into the theater the woman responded, "No thank you, I just want a seat."

Moment to Moment is playing at a theater with a seating capacity of perhaps no more than 35. It resembles a crowed prop room from a high school theatrical production. The stage is lower than the audience literally and figuratively. The hardwood seats become more noticeable in the course of the pathetic semblance of entertainment below.

And, of course, if one does decide to waste three hours to see this "tragedy," one should be aware of the quite appropriate stench of the theater. The only catharsis stemming from the hideous Moment to Moment occurred after the show, when this reviewer washed the Beacon Hill Playhouse smell out of her clothes.