Rhonda Badonda – A Beautiful Brain

Rhonda Badonda: Pain in Her Brain is a credit to the solo show format. Rhonda Musak, the writer and performer of this creative autobiographical piece, fills the stage with motion and personality. She slips into her many characters with ease, and while some of the accents don't quite ‘stick’, the characters themselves are lovingly crafted and portrayed. Musak acts, narrates, and sometimes dances her way through the experience of growing up with a learning disorder she doesn't know she has, a story she tells with glowing wit and humor.

The focus of the first part of the play, naturally enough, is elementary school. The exploration of childhood is where the performance was least immersive. When Musak plays her youngest incarnation, her manner suggests someone speaking to a child rather than as one.

It's very difficult for anyone to reinhabit the world of childhood after leaving it. The performance grows more authentic as the protagonist Rhonda ages – presumably, as she converges on the performer in the present. By the time she moves to New York a little past the one-third mark, the character's voice is poignant and clear.

For anyone familiar with learning disorders, the performance unfolds like a mental health whodunnit. We learn of the real culprit as the protagonist does in the final third of the play. Her therapist takes time to explain the disorder in detail. Though the exposition is appropriate and interesting, its delivery slows the pathos. The final joy, when Rhonda discovers that she can at last face the world with a clear mind, feels delayed; it seems to pick up from the first part of the play rather than bringing her ordeal with therapy to culmination.

Musak's exploration of her brain is the metaphor that ties everything else together. First it is formless: in its fluidity, knowledge fails to anchor on anything. Then it is over-cluttered with rituals and rote memorization. Finally it opens up, and she feels that she can wander through it as if through a library of well-worn books. Rhonda Badonda: ... Pain in Her Brain shines in its expression of the beauty and strangeness of the mind.