‘My Left Breast’ Offers Personal Look at Grief, Bravery

The literature of personal disaster is a time-honored genre, beginning, arguably, with the tales of the Christian martyrs.

Since people no longer get thrown to the lions, except metaphorically, the genre today tends to be maintained by one-person shows that tell of harrowing battles with disease, such as leukemia (Evan Handler’s “Time on Fire”) or cancer (Julia Sweeney’s “God Said, ‘Ha!’ ”). Specifics of the woeful tale matter far less than the way in which the story is told. Tone is extremely important; self-pity without irony makes for another kind of disaster.

At the Celebration Theatre, the latest addition to the genre is a show called “My Left Breast,” written and performed by Susan Miller. Miller has a sad tale to tell, all right, but the manner in which she tells it is less than compelling.

Miller is a “one-breasted lesbian Jewish bisexual mom.” Her travails--which include facing a mastectomy, losing a baby, raising a son and dealing with a painful rejection from a woman called Franny--fill the play. Writerly to a fault, “My Left Breast” is full of carefully constructed phrases that are pretty-sounding but dramatically lumpish, such as Miller’s description of herself abandoned by Franny: “Cold, unattended, the drift that I am, her detritus.”

Her flights of word fancy come off as affected more than heartfelt, such as when she goes into the third person to describe herself in the throes of a cocaine addiction, which “kept her from the ache of caring.” She cocks her head as she gently sees herself, remembering, “the woman ironing her son’s shirt felt ashamed.”

Her images, too, keep this un-ordinary story bound to the ordinary. Miller relates an epiphany--a sudden appreciation of everyday life while watching her son play baseball--which is conveyed to us in prose that sounds labored-over and pedestrian.

“My Left Breast” purports to be about spunk, with Miller proclaiming that “a scar is a challenge to see ourselves as survivors after all.” And she does, in fact, under tasteful lighting, show us the scar from her operation. But, as a writer, she seems much more interested in the languor of her pain, the moment when “Your doctor says it’s positive/Your lover says it’s over.”

Director Nela Wagman underlines everything that is already obvious. On the surface, Miller presents herself as a fighter, which she no doubt must be. But the occasional tremor in her voice, the tone of her writing, contains the kind of emotional blackmail that was scrupulously avoided in the work of, say, Sweeney and Handler. “My Left Breast” insists that you admire it so often that you may just decide not to.

*

* “My Left Breast,” Celebration Theatre, 7051-B Santa Monica Blvd., Hollywood, Thursdays-Saturdays, 8 p.m.; Sundays, 3 and 7 p.m. Ends March 1. $20. (213) 660-8587. Running time: 1 hour.