Review: Emily Stout Shines at Any Age in Solo Show "Grownup"
Grownup Written and performed by Emily Stout Directed by Mary Rose Branick Presented by The Associates Theater Ensemble at MITU580 580 Sackett St., Unit A – Ground Fl, Brooklyn, NYC April 21-30, 2023 Emily Stout. Photo by Eileen Meny. If someone asked you to identify the moment when you became a grownup, what would your answer be? That imagined boundary–and its crossing–is one of the concerns of Grownup , a superb new solo show from Emily Stout, one of the founding members of The Associates Theater Ensemble. Stout reveals early on that even though she currently may not be good at many areas of being an adult (a lack of mastery to which, no doubt, many of us can relate), she dreamed of being grown up, which she associated with hardship, since she was a young child. While she fantasizes some such hardships as a child, some are also very real, such as a persistent insomnia that takes hold in elementary school (but also, in a nuance characteristic of the show, later, if somewhat inadverte...