Review: A Foster Child Finds More and Less Than She Bargained For in Relative Stranger

You’ve surely heard the broad strokes of comedian Chanel Ali’s new show Relative Stranger before: the foster child who, as an adult, embarks on a quest to find her biological parents—or, in this case, just her father. As always, though, especially with deeply personal solo shows like this one, the details are what make the most seemingly conventional setups interesting. In Ali’s case, she has plenty of colorful ones, both comic and tragic, to share within its packed hour.

Before she gets to her dad, though, she has to reckon with both her mother and grandmother. She was taken away from the former, a drug abuser who had recently been diagnosed with schizophrenia, when she was only 2 years old. In one of the show’s many ironies, her mother had actually gotten clean before she was born. No such luck with her grandmother, who was a crack addict when she took her in and who turned out to be physically abusive. And yet, in prefacing her account of life with her grandmother, she describes her with affection—an emotional contradiction that Ali admirably refuses to downplay.

Only when she turns 18 does she finally, through a court-ordered DNA test, find out who her father is: a police officer in New Jersey. Since this revelation took place before the creation of Facebook, her quest to track down and locate her dad turns into a whole journey in and of itself, one involving cold calls to a slew of police stations before she comes upon the right one. Though they take to each other initially, her relationship with her dad eventually comes under strain when she realizes the extent to which he’s unwilling to take responsibility for his past actions.

There turns out to be more than one “relative stranger” in Ali’s show, however. Thanks to a complimentary 23andMe genetic test she was offered as a result of appearing in a Kevin Hart-produced commercial for the popular DNA company, she discovers she has a brother based in Philadelphia who, at the time, is a soldier in Bahrain. The immediate familial warmth between them when they finally meet in person adds to the question of nature vs. nurture that Ali off-handedly mentions at one point and which otherwise remains an intriguing subtextual thread in the show.

Formally speaking, Relative Stranger is a glorified stand-up set, the otherwise bare stage consisting only of a stool on stage right (Christine Page is credited as the set designer). Director Ryan Cunningham does bring some minor theatrical flair to the proceedings, though. Costume designer Brandi Denise clothes Ali in a colorful top that does just as much as the show’s jokes to infuse some light to emotionally dark material. And Dan Robinson offers some simple lighting and sound effects to illuminate certain moments in Ali’s story. House lights alternate up and down when she recalls certain conversations, for instance, to indicate different speakers; and the Bill Withers song “Grandma’s Hands” is briefly heard during a transition.

Ultimately, though, the show’s success comes down to Ali herself, an amiable performer who recounts her at-times harrowing true story with a lack of sentimentality that nevertheless doesn’t shortchange the humor and good spirits she brings to her telling of it. Though she gets off some choice one-liners here and there—her declared preference for Matilda over Annie in the fictional foster-child canon is a memorable sidebar, as is the brief moment in which she refers to herself as “a cocoa Chanel”—she’s a sharp-enough storyteller to know when to ease up on the jokes and allow the inherently gripping nature of her twisty narrative to speak for itself. Relative Stranger could have used a bit more social context to make it go beyond an extended personal anecdote, but some will surely count its refusal to descend into preachiness as a blessing.