"The Bucket Cure' at the Fringe Festival

When was the last time you threw up?

According to writer/performer Christine Cartafalsa, currently inhabiting one of those strangely compelling and surprising educational corners of the Fringe Festival, it's not uncommon to know the exact date of your last gastrointestinal upheaval, and to live in dread of the next one.

Cartafalsa told me that she was moved to write about emetophobia when she heard from other sufferers who were so debilitated by their fears that they contemplated suicide.

In her new short play, The Bucket Cure, Cartafalsa plays Eva, a woman who hasn't vomited in more than 30 years and whose life is paralyzed by fear of the norovirus. For Eva, cruise ships, restaurants and children are absolutely out of the question.

"I don't think I'm going to die if I get sick," Eva insists, even as she acknowledges all the bizarre ways her emetophobia affects her life and marriage. "I'd rather die than get sick."

Welcome to the club

I confess that I'd never heard of emetophobia until earlier this year, when a friend who suffers from it sent around an online survey about the disorder. I filled out the questionnaire on a whim and learned for the first time that my own aversion to vomit borders on a bona fide phobia.

It began early on, when I was marooned at kiddie day camps where someone invariably took one too many turns on the merry-go-round. Even now, at 29, whenever I see someone else throw up, I'm oppressed by a psychosomatic nausea for days. I regard children warily, because experience has taught me that they can erupt at any moment.

Cartafalsa apparently writes from similar experience: After the show, she admitted that she hasn't thrown up since 1985.

Cartafalsa is joined onstage by Eric J. Thompson, who plays Eva's husband, Greg. Dealing with a wife who hoses the house down with bleach at the first hint of nausea, Greg employs everything from tender exasperation to steely manipulation and insults.

Sadistic psychologist

As Eva battles therapy, contemplates a nightmarish toddler-prepared ground-beef dinner, and begins to suspect that Greg has put ipecac in her food, Cartafalsa's script expertly zeros in on the ways that an outwardly insignificant issue can infect every part of a marriage when partners lack the ability to cope. In facing her "very scary and embarrassing problem," Cartafalsa's Eva is equal parts neurotic and sympathetic.

Director Sean Toczydlowski also appears in three small supporting roles, including a fairly sadistic exposure-therapy psychologist, complete with trademark bow tie.

Better attention to the physical gestures that filled in the characters' world in the minimalist staging would have made for a stronger performance, but The Bucket Cure's only serious misstep was teaming with two short comedy shows, both ostensibly about phobias.

Grim Reaper

In the first, Date with Death, a young woman holds a conversation with the Grim Reaper. The second piece, Fringe Phobia, developed and performed by Philip Jacobson and the GiggleMill Improv Comedy Troupe, seems to have confused phobias with Tourette's Syndrome, obsessive-compulsive disorder and painfully juvenile gags.

So it's a relief when Thompson and Cartafalsa take the stage for a unique, courageous and thought-provoking play that should have had the stomach to stand on its own.

After the show, Cartafalsa told me she considers herself largely recovered from her phobia"“ a good thing, given her day job in a restaurant.