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An appealing, dynamic and strong-willed young woman plays the Douglas Theatre on Saturday night.
You should look in on her if only because you are a recovering cheapskate and tickets are a scant $5, which even your youngest child can afford, whatever his age.
Even better, Veterans, a title we upper-case in this newspaper, can walk in free wherever and whenever she is performing.
“I would hate to lose an opportunity to invite Veterans to a free night of entertainment, which we haven’t done enough of in our little city,” she says. “We say, yeah, ‘Support the Troops.’ But we don’t really provide anything for them unless they go to the V.A., and wait in line.”
She will not be hard to find on stage.
April Fitzsimmons is a solo act, but with a lot of company. She plays 29 characters. After the 8 o’clock performance of “The Need to Know,” you may find that you are smitten with her as I was.
The Day Her World Was Overturned
More than anything in her future, she wants to be a fulltime actress. Since a sunny day in ’02 — a few months after 9/11 became the Northridge Earthquake of her life — she has been staging this production around Los Angeles and in selected venues out across the country.
The billing is:
“A coming of age story about a former Air Force intelligence analyst who believed serving her country would make a difference. She takes us from a Montana jail to basic training and through the halls of the National Security Agency.”
“Some people like a solo show, and some people don’t,” she says, casually, “but it is a successful show. Very few shows run for 6 years in L.A. And I am excited to share my story.
“The story is that of a military Veteran. But it’s really about me awakening to my own humanity and me understanding my connection to all human beings.”
How much of her life does it span?
“Forty years,” she says, surprising me.
Having anticipated a different response, I was caught without a next question. I mumbled something about struggling.
“Don’t struggle,” she said with a laugh, throwing back her head. “Life’s short.”
Eyewitness News
Returning to winging it, I admitted that I was cloudy about the contents of “The Need to Know.”
Employing undeniable logic, Ms. Fitzsimmons said: “It’s really hard to characterize my story if you haven’t seen it.”
That, of course, was the step in missed in Ms. Murgatroyd’s Play Review Class: See the darned thing before commenting extensively about it.
She is pretty, which helps, but her mind is prettier, and that gives her appeal a more significant bump.
We were going to meet for about 20 minutes at Starbucks after she arrived back in Culver City from her day job. I stayed four times as long because shmoozing with her was like opening a very good book, an intriguing Henry James tome, or analyzing one of H.L. Mencken’s prickly political essays.
Since Ms. Fitzsimmons is neither a comedienne nor an electrician, perhaps it is not important that she is impossible to pigeonhole. As they brag on a certain network, we report, you decide.
