S U S A N L E S L I E
LOS ANGELES OVATION AWARD WINNER
Best Ensemble
"Trials and Tribulations of a Trailer Trash Housewife"
LOS ANGELES OVATION AWARD NOMINEE
Best Supporting Actress
"Yellow"
LA WEEKLY AWARD WINNER
Best Comedy Ensemble
"Yellow"
BACKSTAGE GARLAND AWARD WINNER
Best Ensemble
"Yellow"
LOS ANGELES
DRAMA CRITIC'S CIRCLE AWARD WINNER
Best Production
"Yellow"
LA WEEKLY THEATER
"Pick of the Week
"The Oklahoma City Federal Building bombing is the inspiration for OKC bred writer-performer Susan Leslie's comedic stories of eight different women in crisis. In the hands of a lesser talent, this might've been a contrived premise, but there's nothing clichéd about Leslie's smart one-woman show. Most of the characters are confined by their "normal" mainstream lives made intolerable by their neuroses about the opposite sex. And many of them are nuts, or in the process of becoming so. There's Sandra, the frustrated office manager who's having an affair with a co-worker to stave off the boredom of her dead-end job and who keeps hearing a phone ringing in her head; and the manic Pentecostal Sunday School teacher, Miss Chaney, who hurls invectives at her pupils ("Kids, behave yourselves, or I'll nail you to the cross with Jesus Christ!"). Leslie infuses her endearing, foibled personalities with biting humor and heart and is as believable portraying an anti-social clairvoyant barfly as she is an Oprah-obsessed suburban housewife. David Nathan Schwartz's skilled direction, Kathi O'Donohue's textured lighting and a few simple props help bring Leslie's characters to life."
DRAMA-LOGUE
"Critic's Choice"
"Yes, this is yet another one-woman show featuring multiple characters ala Lily Tomlin. But don't compare this play entitled "This Is Your Wake-Up Call!" with the scores of relentless showcase pieces that have made their way down the pike in the last several years. This is an entertaining and powerful evening of theatre presented with a few minimal props by the radiant Susan Leslie, a young actress who is clearly at the top of her form. Taking as her theme the transformation of the lives of seemingly ordinary women in society, by unexpected events. Leslie gives us a whole diverse cast of characters. There's the frustrated college graduate who finds herself in an unsatisfying middle management position with a large dehumanizing corporation. She suddenly starts to hear a telephone ringing in her head and is reluctant to answer it, for the same reason many of us are... it may mean we have to face up to the sobering fact that our lives are going nowhere fast. There are the two girlfriends in school who do a number on one another as only adolescent girls can do and then come to terms with each other later in life. There is the weird fundamentalist Sunday school teacher who threatens to nail her charges up on the cross, the kidnapping victim who recounts to herself the advice of Oprah Winfrey at the moment of her greatest crisis and a woman at the bar who keeps seeing and having conversations with ghosts. Leslie ends with a charged piece about an experience from her own life involving the Oklahoma City Federal Building bombing a couple of years ago. Under Nathan Schwartz's inspired direction, Leslie captures both the humor and poignancy of these characters in a truly remarkable performance."