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Show: Viva Vivi
San Francisco Fringe Festival
Written and Performed by Diana Galligan
Directed by Victoria Goring
San Francisco Chronicle - Robert Hurwitt
Diana Galligan of Toronto is another captivating
actor-writer, though her show -- "Viva Vivi!" (Silent
Pepper Productions) at Stage Left -- is more of a silent movie.
Which is appropriate, since it's the story of a silent film star's
career falling apart with the advent of talkies. Staged in sharp,
quick scenes by Victoria Goring, and performed -- mostly in silence
-- with broad early-cinema gestures and Galligan's irresistibly
expressive eyes, it's poignant, comic and engaging.
SF Weekly - Michael Scott Moore
Diana Galligan's Viva Vivi! is better: It's a
live silent film about a fictional Hollywood star, Vivi Vitaly,
stranded in 1928 by the sudden arrival of sound technology. Galligan
has strong movement skills, and she's studied silent-film divas;
she captures the wide eyes, the puckering lips, and the sophisticated
insouciance of a flapper who never has to utter a word. Like the
real-life Mary Pickford, poor Vivi has a horrid squeaky voice that
dooms her career in "talkies," and Galligan's treatment
of a down-and-out Vivi is hilarious.
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