The Project is a 45-minute excursion into the mind of Katie, a young American with an addiction to "boyfriend projects" and “daddy issues”.
We find her at a wellness resort, not entirely by choice, for a period of personal recalibration and a chance to get clean of her habit, her latest relationship having broken up.
Being single is unfamiliar territory to Katie, who serially dates men who exhibit a range of toxic characteristics from narcissism to alcoholism with the sole intent of repairing them, taking on the “boyfriend project” challenge in the same way others would approach a reupholstering task.
Whilst most relationships are punctuated by assorted gestures of affection and red flag events, Katie’s have “teaching moments” with good outcomes rewarded by sex. Her immersion in these dysfunctional projects comes at the cost of neglecting her friends and leaving herself without a supportive network.
The Project is an easy listen. Shannon Kurlander writes with clarity and an observational wry wit: the phone-free, television-free spa is a “luminous purgatory” where self-help sessions are populated by "troubled Gwyneth Paltrow lookalikes", but the story she lays out slumps low on credibility in places.
The narrative implies a history of repeated failed boyfriend projects, but Katie is written as too young to have had the number and nature of experiences that would leave her as sad and spent as is suggested, needed even to give the story depth.
Kurlander delivers a very watchable performance but portrays an immature Katie. As she resorts to swilling merlot from a bottle in the early afternoon in the style of her mother, she comes across more like a pubescent playing at grown-ups with her mum’s make-up than an adult caught on a carousel of self-sabotage they don’t know how to stop.
Scene by scene, the monologue reveals a young woman unable to face her own truths, and here director Lydia McKinley could have done more to contrast the periods of narration and of introspection to bring out the character progression because Kurlander, whose writing shows great promise, can clearly tell a story.