Clara Brennan's 'Spine' by Inis Nua

Amy is a pugnacious West London teen played with impressive depth and sincerity by Emily R. Johnson, a member of Found Theater Company, a Neighborhood Fringe stalwart. Amy answers an ad for what she thinks is a room for let — having worn out her welcome elsewhere — which turns out to be a life-changing encounter.

Stories within the story

We're immediately engrossed in a story within the story, as Amy relates how she told "Mrs. G" about how she reached the old lady's doorstep tattered and wounded. She dumped a disrespectful boyfriend, then was fired from her dead-end job, harassed by "bully girls," and tossed out by her family.

Amy, just a few feet away from the audience that sits on on three sides of Meghan Jones’s cozy set (with one of those nice surprises that Jones does so well), shares more with us than with "the old bird" in an often hilarious, sometimes harrowing, aria of profanity and poetry. (Many playwrights from the United Kingdom — Inis Nua's specialty — excel at this sort of fictional monologue: Inis Nua did another in last fall's similarly excellent Hooked!, which was three interlocking monologues. American playwrights, strangely, do not: We prefer monologues from the mouths of historical figures, if at all.)

Mrs. G seems a nutter at first — she dithers about in a nightgown and won't venture upstairs, then asks Amy whom she met up there — but she's willing to listen. Johnson slips easily from Amy-talking-to-us to Mrs. G-talking-to-Amy, and provides colorful impressions of many other characters too. While Charles Dickens restrained himself from blatant swearing and frank sexual details, Amy's story of self-discovery has a fairy-tale quality that feels familiar.

An all-female production

Director Claire Moyer keeps all this clear while the set remains Mrs. G's home, only failing to trust the audience once: Amy tells a drinking story, and opens a box with multiple shots conveniently lined up — which wouldn’t be in Mrs. G's, or anyone's, drawing room. Why Moyer didn’t trust the audience’s imaginations enough to have Johnson pantomime this and maintain the storytelling vibe is befuddling.

Overall, this fine production entertains while building to a serious message about libraries and community activism. When Amy first sees Mrs. G’s hoard of books, she's stunned — "It's only fucking books," she exclaims, "like she's the Amazon fucking warehouse!" — but Mrs. G. enlists her in the cause. "Libraries," she explains, "are emblematic of all that's good about civilization."

I loved Amy's simple joy in discovering that novelist George Eliot was a woman. I felt that same joy when I saw that the entire production team — also including production manager Lauren Tracy, stage manager Alyssa Cole, technical director Georgia Schlessman, lighting designer Amanda Jensen, sound designer Ashley Turner, costume designer Rebecca Kanach, and props specialist Jennifer Burkhardt, accomplished professionals all — are women. It should not be a rare feat these days -- and yet, sadly, it is.

Inis Nua invites audiences to donate one or more new children's books for any performance for $5 off their ticket. The books will go to the Free Library of Philadelphia in support of Spine's pro-library message.