Leah Mijalski-Fahim’s Face Value flirts with provocative themes and throws them headfirst into the spotlight, exposing murky edges of sex, performance, and perception with a script that dares to be uncomfortable. Presented as part of the Downtown Urban Arts Festival, the play sets up a charged collision between two people whose professional relationship quickly becomes a case study in everything they think they know about each other—and themselves.
At its center is a jaded male writer, played by Matthew Zimmerman—sharp-tongued, insecure, and clinging to borrowed wisdom—who hires a dynamic, sharp-witted publicist, played by Bree Ogaldez. She’s magnetic from the moment she steps on stage. Ogaldez delivers her lines with zest, shaping the room around them. Her character, a free spirit with hidden wounds, takes on the job of marketing a book about sex written by a man who can’t even name what he wants with his own body. What starts as a workplace dynamic spirals into a layered excavation of perception and truth-telling.
The playwright refuses to make things tidy. These characters stumble through ego, mask their fears, break apart, then piece themselves back together. It’s not a rom-com, though there are moments of humor and not a therapy session, even though emotions do spill. And thank God it doesn’t rely on tropes to deliver a message.
The tension rests in what isn’t said between the two actors. The writer hides behind academic language and glossy ideas, but his real struggle is with identity—something he tries to mask by overperforming knowledge he doesn’t possess. His discomfort around the publicist is palpable, often mistaking her confidence for provocation, her vulnerability for weakness. But the real power shift comes when she refuses to be defined by his gaze.
Ogaldez shines in these quieter turns, delivering her monologue about creative failure with a subtle ache that lands in the gut. She reveals that her stalled writing career wasn’t due to lack of talent, but a belief that she couldn’t be taken seriously. That moment hits hard—because it’s familiar. Especially for women in male-dominated industries where being “too much” and “not enough” are daily accusations.
What’s smart here is that the writer’s arc doesn’t offer redemption in the way we’re used to. He doesn’t get the girl. He doesn’t have an epiphany that fixes everything. His growth is in admitting he knows nothing, that his entire brand is performative. The climax lands not in sex, but in truth. And when he steps back and invites the publicist to write the book instead—because she’s been the expert all along—that’s where the intimacy lives.
There are moments where the play could’ve breathed a bit more. The final scene, in particular, felt rushed—as if the script sprinted toward resolution without letting the audience fully sit in the weight of what was said. That aside, the story’s strength lies in its discomfort.
Direction left room for awkward silences, the kind that make the audience lean in, wondering whether a line has been dropped or a truth has been caught. And while the chemistry between the leads wasn’t smooth throughout, it didn’t need to be. That friction served the story—two people learning to speak without defense.Face Value isn’t about sex. It’s about control. About perception. About what it means to really be seen. And in a cultural moment hungry for hot takes and neat labels, this play reminds us that the most radical intimacy begins when we stop performing and start listening.
#FaceValue #BreakingBarriers #IdentityMatters
