Tamar Broadbent's Get Ugly: Practically Perfect Reflective Effervescence

Tamar Broadbent's Get Ugly at The Underbelly Med Quad's Clover theatre was one of those shows that was simple in construction, but simply sublime in content. Tamar hooks you from the moment she walks on stage, she's absolutely winsome...as winsome as you can be while singing about bikini waxes and jobs that deal with blowing. She's so endearing that you wish she was your friend or at least a frenemy...she reminds you of your friend or cool older sister. (which I don't have, I mean, I'm the cool older sister...obviously) She's effortlessly natural on stage and exquisitely skilled in improvising content with the audience.

The performance I was at, a guy she went to elementary school was in the audience. They hadn't seen each other in years and she didn't know he was coming AT ALL. She realized he was in the audience after crawling across two rows of audience to have him sing out some lyrics to Hipster Without a Cause. The look on her face when she realized who he was was priceless. She was so caught unawares she crawled back to the stage and stopped the song to explain their relationship. They had coyishly dated as 12 year olds, he leaving another young girl for Tamar. (Ah, when love was simple) It was such a perfect exchange for her show Get Ugly as an antithesis to all the ugly things that can exist in modern dating. So, Tamar, if you don't call Tom to reconnect it would be such a waste of a perfectly clandestine chance to see if you can rekindle some of that young love.

The show is mostly songs with small interjections and monologues, which is understandable since Tamar's writing and composing skills are top notch. I wish her scansion and rhyme schemes were a little more varied to differentiated the sound of some of the songs, but the lyrics are the stars as Tamar is absolutely hilarious. Her songs really touch on modern dating and the pitfalls of being a petite adorable girl with a cute accent who has to draw on her eyebrows every morning (babe, I get you!). The songs that were most successful were her song about her sister (definitely teared up) and Sexy Gym Girl about those girls that go to the gym looking flawless (thankfully I've figured out you can avoid most of them in Los Angeles if you don't attempt Equinox or any yoga studio...like at all). The songs are so good, I would love to see Tamar write a full staged musical for the self-loathing millennial girl. It's such fresh content and feel it would be super relatable to all those girls out there that are frustrated with the modern dating landscape. It could be the Lena Dunam's Girls of the musical theatre world and I encourage her to push this content into a full length piece.

This is a show for anyone who wants to laugh, sing along, and get to know one lovely, expert driving, fridge moving woman, Tamar, practically perfect in every way...

FOUR STARS