Girlfight

This is not the edgy, urban and Hip Hop-inflected rant on race, class and gender that its title might suggest. Instead, the members of Cincinnati's Performance Gallery have assembled a strange and startling show that is cerebral and silly and, for the most part, a lot of fun to watch.

The action begins at the end and works backwards Memento-style, while an onstage flipchart tags each scene with a subtitle and time elapsed from the opening image of the show — the four cast members at each other’s throats in a frozen moment of comic aggression.

The series of scenes that follow record in reverse chronology a feud between two unnamed women — one a fast-talking, fastidious type-A socialite and the other a vegetarian neurotic with a fixation on the Dalai Lama. Local favorites Aretta Baumgartner and Regina Pugh play the opposing pair with a tense ferocity that makes you think either one could explode at any moment, while darting though a dizzy range of emotional peaks and valleys. These are great performances by two fiercely funny artists who know their craft.

George Alexander — who provides narration, mediation and the occasional male perspective — manages to the do the near-impossible by matching Baumgartner and Pugh beat for beat in delivery and drive. He gives almost every line a hilarious twist while powerfully, but playfully, sharing the stage without ever giving an inch of it away.

Director Brian Robertson does a terrific job keeping the pace and imagery crisp and electric. One scene that depicts the four characters riding a bus while actually seated on the four edges of a wooden cube, could be used as a textbook example of what the stage does best — engaging the imagination through suggestion rather than saturation.

Girlfight, however, is not without its faults, and they're as glaring as its strengths. One is the inclusion of several monologues presented by Jodie Linver about the loss of a husband and its aftermath. The topic and tone of these inserts feel forced and out of place, and they drain the energy out of the show. It doesn’t help that Linver’s voice dips into her lower register when she wants to sound emotional, making her delivery sometimes nearly inaudible.

Another disappointment is the overall structure of the storyline. Girlfight was developed from a series of improvisations, and while the individual scenes have been scripted with a rewarding level of detail, the shape of the show remains muddled and never really clarifies why these two different women became so intent on doing harm to one another.

Within the framework of the individual scenes, however, there are some terrific sequences, including how to kill someone with a cucumber and an encyclopedic entry on the owl and why it says “Who?”

As complete piece of theater, Girlfight isn't quite the sum of its parts. But some of its parts — such as the three lead performances, the direction and the writing of individual scenes — make it a blast and well worth fighting for a seat before the Fringe Festival closes. Grade: A-

— Nicholas Korn