Crazy Bag

Critiqued by Holly Bartges

Murphy Funkhouser is simply a marvel!! Besides being an exquisite performer with an artist’s aptitude for timing, her perception, comprehension, and wisdom feeds into her honest material. The Good News is her one-woman show has been extended to the end of July. To miss it is simply a loss. She contains magic in her brain as it fills her eyes with aliveness.

Murphy Funkhouser in Crazy Bag. Photo by Matt Lit

At the opening of Crazy Bag, the stage is bare except for a monster-under-the-bed-of-some-sort covered by a huge tarp. Bustling onto the stage she carries two small suitcases carefully placing them at one end of the stage. Scurrying, she returns loaded down with hatboxes and other suitcases she carefully places on the opposite side. In a magician like mode she yanks the tarp from the secret monster revealing not a monster but gobs of trunks and suitcases. Not just gobs, but gobs and gobs.

She has a great deal of baggage she wants to get rid of, and definitely wants to share the getting-rid-of story with everyone wiling to listen. Once she starts her verbal journey, you’ll want to do nothing but listen.

Brought up in an evangelical minister’s home, restrictions of should’s on top of should’s piled up. She wants to live life. She wants to explore. She wants to experiment. She wants to discover all that life has to offer, always the restrictions whispering “Whoa”.

Somewhere deep inside of her lives an altered ego imp egging her on To Do while the restrictions shake their finger saying “No”. Demonstrating the Inside Imp through a larger than life cut out dressed provocatively in skimpy clothes with boots and torn fishnet stockings beckoning, prodding, and teasing her to think for herself. Thinking for herself to the Inside Imp, placated on the bigger-than-life cutout, spells rebellion.

No question, she loves her parents dearly, but she desires her life, not theirs. Her parents were a perfectly matched couple, and she tried to be the Good-Little-Onward-Christian- Soldier-Girl, but that Inside Imp kept getting in her way, following her everywhere she went, cracking jokes and making seditious comments. She wanted to know who she was, really; what made her tick. Restrictions hardly aid and abet exciting excursions. Right, wrong, or indifferent she had to find it for herself.

the way baggage of the right, wrong, and indifferent piled up. She packed them away, but packing away baggage doesn’t resolve anything. The packing away adds to the clutter.

The time had come when Murphy needed to unpack the menagerie of suitcases, trunks, and hatboxes. The time had come to sort through the pieces of her life bearing down on her, discard what was no longer necessary and give credence to that which deserved center stage.

After some wandering around, Murphy found herself in the Colorado Mountains, discovered Breckenridge’s Backstage Theatre, becoming a regular performer in the summer of 2006.

Artistic Director, Christopher Willard, endowed with a sharp sense of perception, suggested to Murphy, the possibility of a one-woman show to. A spark ignited and it occurred to her a lot of baggage needed to be unraveled. Premiering at the 2007 Colorado Theatre Festival, Crazy Bag garnered Murphy All-State Actress, Crazy Bag left Christopher Willard with Best Director, and Crazy Bag walked away with the Best Set honor.

With poignant, piercing humor in deliberate animation and fire in her eyes, Murphy moves cleverly, carefully through her years of rebellion, listening to her Inside Imp as she unpacks one bag after another.

First and foremost, an actor par excellence, Murphy draws in her audience through her eyes, her flirtatious expressions, her sharp stares, and carefully thought out words. As she unloads her baggage, one can’t help but wonder about their baggage. Her journey takes her to the towns of Loneliness, Isolation, and Separation. She falls for empty words of caring, and love caught up in a world of drugs and alcohol. In the midst of her rampaged celebration, she discovers she is pregnant. Pregnant? No, she can’t be. She’s not ready. This can’t be. This isn’t what she wants, that is until she looks into her daughter’s eyes for the first time. The love that once tried to speak to her, that once tried to capture her, the love she refused to listen to once-upon-a-time now spoke a language she could hear and understand. It engulfed her with insight, wisdom, and a newfound strength.

In the very beginning when all of the baggage appears on stage, the very first thought to cross the mind is, “Is there time for her to go through all of that in one-act?” Shortly after her journey begins, the initial thought gets whacked with, “Is that all there is?”

Don’t spend any more time reading about Murphy Funkhouser and Crazy Bag. Call the Vintage for reservations to see and hear her for yourself. She’s a prize, and her thoughtful, stimulating, humorous, celebratory show will tease your imagination into a thoughtful, stimulating, humorous celebration of your very own. You’ll laugh, you’ll cry, you’ll hold your breath, and then you’ll marvel at her return to Home.

Crazy Bag
Starring Murphy Funkhouser
Directed By Christopher Willard
Begins Extensive U.S. Tour