Something isn’t normal in the Pocket Playhouse, and it’s Jackie Jacobus.
Normalcy, or rather the lack thereof, is the subject of Jacobus’ play, “Nail Polish and Tattoos,” which opens today in the Pocket Playhouse. The title is the name of a fictional health spa for women who have problems or abnormalities — a modern-day insane asylum.
The pink surroundings and colorful red and blue uniforms of the fictional asylum try to help bring guests back to normalcy. But the characters, developed by Jacobus through seven monologues, all suffer from very normal problems.
Each monologue is built around a value statement that “Nail Polish and Tattoos” promotes. For example, the second monologue begins with “Nail Polish and Tattoos says, ‘Every woman should have a husband.’” These mantras take Jacobus from being a 6-year-old cancer patient to a 30-something lamenting her dead mother to a motivational speaker for people suffering from an ‘Over-Developed Sense of Romance’ (ODSR).
Having written the show herself, Jacobus injects a personal element into all the characters she portrays. This makes watching the show seem at times as if you are sitting in a confessional booth. The brutal honesty may occasionally make the audience uncomfortable. There are periods when Jacobus’ personal connection feels more distant, and those are the times when the show lags. But when she really connects with something personal, not just for herself but on an individual level with audience members, it hits home.

The most universal of the sketches is the ODSR meeting, and it provides much needed humor in a very emotional show. Jacobus talks about the danger of romance movies, television and love songs. She blames Meg Ryan for being so perfect and Phil Collins for writing sappy songs that we can’t stop listening to. The satire continues until it becomes evident that to prevent oneself from suffering from ODSR, one must be removed from the world.
What evolves from this idea, and throughout the play, is not that normalcy doesn’t exist, but the question: Who would want to be normal? Jacobus deals with this very assertively and ends up turning the stage into more of a soap box.
The show’s 60-minute length is tiring to sit through, but the interest ebbs and flows enough so that there isn’t any period of prolonged length where it is hard to pay attention.
Jacobus is to be commended for writing a show dealing with primarily women’s issues while not isolating a male audience. There are certainly things that men will not relate to, but Jacobus isn’t at all hostile to men.
Even more so, Jacobus deserves credit for putting herself on the line and doing it well.
“Nail Polish and Tattoos” plays today, Friday and Saturday at 5 p.m. in the Pocket Playhouse in Villard Hall.