Tough tale of a princess’s fall...and rise
Goggin is pregnant, she runs away from home and
lands in the Village. There she meets her best friend,
Dawn, tries pot and quickly starts going to clubs and
turning tricks. But the party ends when Goggin’s father
fi nds her in a halfway house.
“I wish you would get some sense,” the king of this
fairy tale tells his princess.
The scenes from Goggin’s life become increasingly
more heartbreaking as she travels to rehab, falls off
the wagon and back into prostitution. By the time our
Bronx princess does get some sense, she has a bottle, a
baby and a black eye.
Although she doesn’t mention it by name in her performance,
Goggin told this paper that she did some
stints in the former Women’s House of Detention —
the infamous “House of D” — at Greenwich and Sixth
Aves.
In the fi nal scene of the performance, when the wall
between performer and audience is at its most thin,
Goggin decides to change for her daughter’s sake, and
forgives herself, the nuns and the king and queen. Reinstilling
hope that people can indeed always choose
to make their lives better, her fairy tale really does end
happily ever after.
“Runaway Princess,” at the IATI Theater, 64 E.
Fourth St., Mon., March 4, and Thurs., March 7, at
7:10 p.m., and Sun., March 10, at 3:30 p.m. Tickets
$20; $15 for seniors, students and military. For more
information, visit marygoggin.com.
Mary Goggin performing in “Runaway Princess.”
A chair is one of only two props in the
Richman gently rocks the Bowery Ballroom
BY BOB KRASNER
Jonathan Richman may be the most stubborn man in the
PHOTO BY BOB KRASNER
Jonathan Richman didn’t play his classic hit “Roadrunner” but the crowd didn’t mind.
212 - 254 - 1109 | www.theaterforthenewcity.net | 155 First Ave. NY, NY 10003
Cross-Pollinations
By Constellation Moving Company
Hybrid Movement Company
and Eckszooberante
Thur - Sat 8PM, Sun 3PM
March 07 - March 17
COLORSTRUCK
Written by Donald E. Lacy Jr.
Directed by Sean San Jose
Fri - Sat 8PM, Sun 3PM
March 07 - March 17
CATAPULT!
Written by Matthew Fitzgerald
Directed by Tony White
Thur - Sat 8PM, Sun 3PM
March 07 - March 10
BY ALEJANDRA O’CONNELL-DOMENECH
Mary Goggin’s one-woman show “Runaway
Princess” is a darkly comedic play about Irish
Catholic parenting, fi rst periods, beehive
hairdos and how that all inevitably leads to becoming a
Village prostitute who loves heroin.
But in between irreverent jabs at Irish history and
sarcastically lighthearted recountings of “hooking” mishaps,
Goggin tells a story of addiction in a performance
that is honest, powerful and ultimately uplifting.
With every vignette of Goggin’s life, the wall between
performer and viewer is broken a bit more, drawing
you in, as you hope that the story isn’t just a fairy tale.
On a dark stage in the East Village’s IATI Theater,
the story begins, of course, in Ireland. Goggin opens
an oversized children’s storybook and tells the tale of
a sadly potato-less land, with a king and queen forced
to fl ee to a faraway possibly potato-fi lled land called
the Bronx.
The audience learns that the king and queen are
Goggin’s parents and that she is their little hardheaded
Bronx princess.
The play then jumps to Goggin’s school years where
she desperately yearns to be one of the cool girls that
“had blonde beehives and wore padded bras!” But,
alas, the poor princess is too tall and lanky and too
friendly with a girl that is way to into marine biology
and is fatefully labeled as “uncool.”
After a rumor spreads to the nuns at school that
piece.
entertainment biz today. He does not own a cell phone,
answers fan mail by hand and doesn’t wear a guitar
strap.
Accompanied only by Tommy Larkins on congas, Richman
recently kept the Bowery Ballroom crowd — at the second
of two sold-out shows — entranced with gently rocking
songs of love, suffering, springtime and Vermeer, sung not
just in English but also French, Spanish and Italian.
His persona veers from deadly serious to stand-up comedian,
but even the jokes convey his extremely earnest
worldview. He tends to steer clear of his own oldies, only
occasionally performing crowd favorites like “Roadrunner,”
and this was not one of those occasions. Which is
not to say that anyone went home disappointed. It’s hard
to leave his show without a smile on your face, no matter
what he does.
Schneps Media TVG March 7, 2019 23
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