Society Hill Playhouse, 507 S. 8th Street, Philadelphia
February 18, 2006

Review by Alyce Wilson

What better way to celebrate Valentine's Day than with good conversation, sweet desserts and sexy lingerie? What's better? To see them all combined on stage. Sweet Kellianne's Whip It! A One Woman Cookin' Show combines monologues from her childhood with fun recipes, which she prepares in aprons and lingerie.

Sweet Kellianne mixes these ingredients with a playful sense of humor, sometimes saucy and sometimes sweet. As she has said in an interview on CoolGrrrls.com, "Sweet Kellianne is me turned into a cartoon and then back into the flesh." She's a little girl, all grown up, who can't stop playing dress up. But instead of princess dresses, she's moved onto lacy bras and see-through aprons.

The performance begins with a video, projected on the white curtain, of home movies and childhood pictures of Sweet Kellianne, cut to the song "I Want Candy." From her earliest days, the video proves, she was a playful exhibitionist.

Then a light comes up behind the curtain, and she does a shadow dance as she gets dressed for the performance. Erotic and fun, the shadow dance was one of the first things she developed for the show, after somebody suggested she turn her book of entertaining recipes, created for friends and family, into a one-woman show.

She introduces each recipe through a monologue, in which she shares a story from her life, many of them from childhood. To introduce the drink called The Striptease, she climbed on a table and demonstrated one of her earliest stripteases, which involved pulling up her skirt while singing "I'm a Woman." The original performance, though, probably involved opaque white stockings, rather than fishnets and panties.

For each recipe, Sweet Kellianne shared preparation basics and then provided a serving suggestion. For the Drag Queen Surprise, she likes to serve the colored chocolate treat layered on a cake platter and topped with a tiara.

Throughout the show, like a Madonna concert, she changed costumes several times: once backstage, and a couple times behind the curtain while she talked. Her outfits were carefully selected to match the recipes she was preparing. For example, when she was making "Let's Play Doctor" cake, she wore a feathery tiara with a glittery cross on it.

Not surprisingly, her sense for theatricality was influenced by Madonna. A New Jersey girl, Kellianne studied dance at the Performing Arts High School in Philadelphia and then moved to L.A., where she helped build and manage her family's dance rehearsal studio. At age 14, she got to watch Madonna rehearse for her Like a Prayer tour, learning the basics of the business.

While she's unlikely to get her own show on Food Network any time soon, she definitely has perfected the art of entertaining.

Just two main criticisms, the first of which is technical. The projector was aimed too low, so that the video segments were partially blocked by audience members' heads. Also, the curtain wasn't quite flat enough, which made the images somewhat distorted.

Most writers would love to hear the other criticism: the show felt too short. Her stories were engaging; the recipes were fun, the presentation was entertaining, and the audience was laughing. Her hour and a half long show felt short, if sweet.

Fortunately, Sweet Kelliannge, who's been performing Whip It! for three years in Los Angeles, is writing both a book of short stories along with a new Whip It! show she hopes to premiere in 2007. Her audiences will no doubt be asking for seconds.