Reno: Rebel Without a Pause

Nominated for a Cable Ace award for the HBO adaptation of her off-Broadway show Reno in Rage and Rehab, standup comedienne and native New Yorker Reno's Rebel Without a Pause--subtitled "Unrestrained Reflections on September 11th"--is a smart, sassy, intimate, painful, and hilarious one-woman show (presented by Lily Tomlin and Jane Wagner, and directed by Nancy Savoca, Dogfight) filmed just two months after the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Reno, a liberal, lesbian, Jewish New Yorker with a commanding stage presence and a gruff voice, delivers a near stream-of-consciousness account of the harried events of that fateful Tuesday morning when she awoke in her apartment (eight blocks away from Ground Zero) to a changed world. Outside, the streets were filled with rumors, debris, and "first-time runners," and like many New Yorkers, Reno--realizing that she was on an island (but a special one--"you go to the mainland…and there's nothing there")--went into emergency preparedness mode ("pack the vibrator; that's a no-brainer"). Her impressionistic riffs chronicling the confusion on the streets are followed by measured assessments of the people and policies in the immediate aftermath of 9/11, ranging from the deification of mayor Rudolph Giuliani ("he's a micromanagement freak; he was born for emergencies") to the country's newfound "absurd amounts of militarism." Most telling are her clear distinctions between being an outraged and hurt American in solidarity with her fellow citizens (she plays a snippet of Celine Dion singing "God Bless America" and--after pointing out that Dion is Canadian--admits that the song brings tears to her eyes) and being a flag-waving follower of the Bush administration's "Crusades" ("God is not a good thing when it comes to politics") and rush to adopt Orwellian policies. Highly recommended. Aud: C, P. (R. Pitman)