I Almost Died for This?! (A love story. Sort of.) ★★★★

It’s been said that “Good girls may go to heaven but bad girls go everywhere,” and Kristina Libby’s experience confirms it. In her solo show I Almost Died for This!? Libby recalls that the two guiding principles as she was growing up were to be a good girl and find a soul mate. Succeeding at both would ensure a life filled with love and happiness. She soon learns that things seldom follow our plans, and when she and her soulmate find each other, he is far from perfect. Or available.

Libby may spend more time on the path to meeting her soulmate than is altogether necessary, as important as that path is to her maturing. Building on her winning Moth StorySlam presentation, Libby and director Padraic Lillis open up the play to include violinist Daniel Lee. Lee deftly comments on and accompanies the play without taking the focus away from Libby.

Libby has said she thought she could write her story, rather than perform it. She found that she enjoys sharing her story with people and hearing their responses. It isn’t at all obvious that she doesn’t have a history as a performer, so natural is she on stage.

Both serious and light-hearted, her route from bad dates to short-term happiness to risky behavior to acceptance keeps the audience fascinated over the course of an hour. In telling her story, she is like a traveler who shares their journey so that the listener doesn’t have to take the same trip. If that trip is the archetypal one in which we find our essential self, Libby makes it a compelling journey nonetheless, and one worth hearing.

This production was reviewed in preview ahead of the Fringe at 59e59