Las Chicas Del 3.5 Floppies: Got Coke?

-posted by P.A. Coleman
The brisk dialogue in Las Chicas is just enough to keep the show feeling dynamic as it circles around itself in a tight knot of desperation and dependency. Here, two women try to find their place in a miniscule world of ex-lovers, sex, drugs and the incongruous tech-themed nightmare that is the 3.5 Floppies nightclub. Similar to Edward Albee’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Wolf, we find two characters reveling in verbal sparring, hurtling lavish insults and anger while understanding, at their core, somehow they care for one another, belong together.
Still, what does that matter in a world of uncaring foreign tourists and violent acquaintances? Shouldn’t there be more than tenuous bonds of friendship? These two women attempt to define themselves with children, money, and religion. But who can find footing in these things when they are constantly being lost or hold no value? For one of the women, the only thing that might bring salvation is faith. In the strongest image of the show, we see this faith as a Virgin Mary statuette, her decapitated head stuffed with drugs, used and abandoned. The women of the 3.5 Floppies are ghosts, echoing back, walking a mobius-strip of globalization, poverty and addiction.
Visually, Las Chicas evokes the dust and grime of a Mexican beach towns, beyond the glittering walls of resorts. No matter how hard it is scrubbed and polished, a shine will not appear on the surface- The despair is simply too thick to wash away. Still, there is some intermittent, if vicarious, catharsis at the 3.5 Floppies club with its Scissor Sisters soundtrack. All that’s left to do is dance the pain away for the night until the grim dawn comes again, its hand held out, begging, “Got any coke?”