Exit Carolyn at The Drilling Company Theatre

Sans A Productions and the Drilling Company Theatre present Exit Carolyn, a new play about loss and grief.

Lorna and Julie, lifelong best friends and current roommates, are coping with the death of their mutual best friend Carolyn in extremely opposing ways. Lorna masks her sadness by overworking and obsessively multitasking, while Julie wallows in hers by wasting her time away getting high (and a little fat) on the couch. Lorna fools herself into believing she's ready to move on from Carolyn's death, as Julie feels she's too paralyzed to do anything because of it.

As the play's plot unfolds, we discover that Carolyn was the middle, conjoining member of their group, and that Lorna and Julie both individually loved and depended on her charisma and strength. Without her they must reexamine their lives and decide who they are outside of their broken threesome (and if they even want to stay friends with each other). They must decide if they want to merely fill her void or truly deal with their grief and learn to live with themselves in Carolyn's absence. In the midst of Lorna and Julie's grief and dilemma, we're introduced to Carolyn's brother Matthew who is dealing with the immensity of his sadness. Matthew brings up some insightful questions as to the authority of grief; he wonders if it's appropriate for a brother to be so sad at the loss of a sister or if only parents and female loved ones (like Lorna and Julie) have the right to be as upset as he is.

Exit Carolyn captures the strange and chaotic layers of grief, while still managing to be a comical and warm show. The one outsider character, Avery, played by the freshly expressive Lauren Blumenfeld, offers some quirky lightheartedness. Laura Ramadei wonderfully embodies Julie's simultaneously funny and tragic slobbish couch-ridden state. For a play dealing with such a heavy theme, Exit Carolyn does a solid job of striking a believable balance of drama and comedy.

Exit Carolyn
Written by: Jennie Berman Eng
Directed by: Adam Knight
Featuring: Lauren Blumenfeld, Jake Loewenthal, Anna O’Donoghue, and Laura Ramadei

The Drilling Company Theatre for New Plays
236 West 78th St. (between Broadway & Amsterdam)
New York, NY 10026

Performance Schedule:
December 8-11 at 8pm
December 15-17 at 8pm

For tickets, go here.
And for a limited time, catch Thursday performances for just $10 (enter discount code: Danish)!