The Cure for Everything
The precocious character who won hearts in the Dora Ward winning You Fancy Yourself is back as a teenager in Maja Ardal's new play. It's 1962, and Elsa's wild new world of sex and rock and roll is being rattled by some explosive tension that's building on the world stage.

Victoria Playhouse
Prince Edward Island
July 2-17, 2011

California International Theatre Festival
Los Angele Theatre Center, Theatre #4
September 8-10, 2011

"As they did with You Fancy Yourself, Ardal and director Mary Francis Moore tackle a broad range of characters, working on an even emptier stage than in their first production and limiting themselves this time to a single costume, both courtesy of designer Julia Tribe.

Yet the show emerges as not only a rich emotional tapestry but a visual feast as well, thanks to Ardal’s consummate skill as storyteller and actress. One has to be very, very good to be this simple.

It may not actually be the cure for everything, but chances are, spending 71 minutes with Ardal and Elsa is going to do a lot for whatever ails you."

~ Jon Colbourne, Toronto Sun

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You Fancy Yourself
A solo show written and performed by core artist Maja Ardal, directed and dramaturged by Mary Francis Moore, designed and co-dramaturged by Julia Tribe.

"In You Fancy Yourself writer/performer Ardal tackles a dozen contrasting types. In this story of quirky adolescence, young immigrant Elsa tries to fit into 50s Edinburgh society where people tend to be suspicious and judgmental.

Though she began her career as an actor, Ardal proved her playwriting skills in Midnight Sun produced at the Tarragon. Here she transforms people from her own history. "I couldn't get some childhood characters out of my mind" recalls Ardal whose own experiences parallel some of the fictional Elsa's. "Two years ago I began writing poetic portraits of them. But because I'm a theatre person, I tried them out in front of people and they took on dramatic life.

Elsa's world contains fronds (Adelle), and enemies, (ramrod-stiff Miss Campbell) but she sees them through the filter of her Norse imagination. "Elsa lives more in her imaginative world than the real one" says Ardal. "She moves from one unreality to another and when the real world punches her in the face she just invents a new fantasy to survive it. Elsa's imagination enriches the lives of everyone around her, but it causes problems too, when she can't find the balance between fantasy and reality."

- John Kaplan, Preview article, NOW Magazine