By Jackie Demaline
The Cincinnati Enquirer

Time Outside My Body starts on film. Actress Tara Guilfoil plays character Tara, whoís been on the wrong side of a fist - a black eye, a nasty cut lip.

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Itís 7:56 a.m. , the morning after her birthday. She celebrated too hard, made some bad choices and now an official-sounding, unsympathetic female voice is questioning off-camera. Did you initiate the contact? Do you always dress like that? Did you take money for sexual acts? ìItís not like that,î she says.

Time tells us exactly what it was like, in a terrific multi-media work by Guilfoil and Natalie Bolan thatís the first must-see event of the Cincinnati Fringe Festival, playing at Rosenthal Center for Contemporary Artís nifty black box theater.

We go back in Time by a few hours, and Tara and her band of cool chick girlfriends are introduced on screen in a collage ñ on cell phones, drinking coffee, shopping for shoes ñ even as they burst onto the stage.

Natalie Bolan (credited for the choreography that fits this show like a vampís stiletto), Peipei Zhou , Lauren Bolan and Gabrielle Bolan dance ñ and they can all move. Guilfoil, whoís been a standout performer on the alternative theater scene, is compelling as always. She enters delivering a stage-rocking rap ìRide My Vibe.î

In no time theyíre hitting the downtown club scene and Tara is behaving badly.

Time is a bombardment. Pulsing techno is layered over Roesing Ape ís superb film work, which unreels as counterpoint to the live performance that flows with emotion, a lot of it raw.

Tara drives off her posse and lets her game spin out of control. She goes home with a stranger. Guilfoil and Bolan are fearless collaborators who donít move the rape tastefully off-stage. They make the audience a sort of passive accomplice as Tara is assaulted in a violent shadow play behind a backlit white sheet.

As for the title, itís where Taraís spirit goes during the rape. The show has nudity, live and on film, as our shattered heroine bathes, scrubbing, almost clawing, at her violated skin. You know she wonít feel clean and whole any time soon.

Not all the supporting players are good at line delivery, with Natalie Bolan and Zhou the best. And Guilfoil and Bolan need to tinker with the closing moment. The audience doesnít know itís over, and some of the showís power is lost in their confusion.

Donít miss Time Outside My Body. It could find a home ñ and an audience ñ in well-established national Fringe Festivals across the U.S. Itís great to see it here first.