Tricia Rose Burt's autobiographical solo show I Will Be Good, at the Players Theatre, not only suffers from a lack of dramatic drive, but her stories about-growing up in the South, marrying the wrong man too young, and abandoning her passion for a safe career are presented in such a self-indulgent way that it's hard to understand why anyone outside of her circle of friends and family would care.
There isn't much holding the solo show together except this vague idea that throughout her life, Burt has made decisions based not on what she thinks would make her happy but what is good as defined by the very conservative Southern clique in which she was raised. While this appears to have been a revelation for the middle-aged writer and performer, we only get a muddled down version of the catharsis.
Clocking in at around 80 minutes, Good feels much, much longer. Burt paints herself into a dramatic abyss with a string of lackluster stories, Powerpoint presentations, and awkward recreations of moments from her youth. Towards the end of the piece, she displays an odd piece of art she made, and while the nature and meaning of it is puzzling, it finally plants the slightest seed of wonder inside us.
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