Theater review by Adam Feldman
Cecily Strong is a sketch comedian of the first order, as she has proved in a decade of excellent work on Saturday Night Live, and it’s easy to imagine her shining in a solo show designed around her talents. But in her New York stage debut in The Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe, she’s in someone else’s tailored suit. This mostly comedic multicharacter showcase was created by Jane Wagner in 1985 for her longtime partner, the brilliant Lily Tomlin, who performed it to hosannas on Broadway and beyond. Some of the material now seems worn, though, and on Strong it doesn’t quite fit, at least not yet; it’s baggy in some places, squeezy in others, and it rarely looks very comfortable.
A loquacious bag lady named Trudy, who wears a colorful inverted umbrella on her head as a satellite dish to communicate with her “alien chums,” provides the loose framing device for a series of interconnected scenes that she channels as though surfing through frequencies on a radio dial. The first part of the show gives us characters in brief monologues; the second half offers a more pointed longitudinal look at a woman having a hard time trying to have it all. Like Trudy, whose overcoat is lined with pithy observations on colored Post-It notes, Search for Signs offers many flashes of wit. (“I worry that drugs have forced some of us to be more creative than we really are.”)
In some ways, Search for Signs jibes well with our current moment: Much of it is about trying to find happiness and make connections with other people in an age of confusion, isolation, narcissism and anomie. (“What’s the point of being a hedonist if you’re not having a good time?” wonders one character.) But while it has been updated with references to laptops and Elon Musk, much of the script is stubbornly rooted in a 1970s world of gestalt therapy, the ERA and Whole Earth Catalogue. More than ever, the show requires strong distinctions of characterization to help the audience follow along and power past the maudlin bits. That’s a lot to ask of a performer, and as directed by Leigh Silverman at the Shed, Strong doesn’t draw the lines sharply enough; the characters bleed into each other, and the narrative of the second half gets muddled. This may improve as she performs the piece more often in front of an audience—on the night I attended, she seemed a bit unsure and underrehearsed—but in its current shape, the show doesn’t make contact. The search and the intelligence are there, but not the life.
The Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe. The Shed (Off Broadway). By Jane Wagner. Directed by Leigh Silverman. With Cecily Strong. Running time: 1hrs 40mins. No intermission.
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