Review: ACT's LAUREN WEEDMAN DOESN'T LIVE HERE ANYMORE Cavorts with Little Point

Dear Readers, if you know me you know of my disdain for shows that end up as someone else's therapy on stage. So, you'll understand how I was filled with hope when ACT's current offering of Lauren Weedman's one woman show "Lauren Weedman Doesn't Live Here Anymore" began with Weedman commenting on how she too hates it when people go into the dirty details of their personal life as well as some seriously funny moments from Weedman. You'll also understand how let down I felt when she quickly abandoned that pretense and devolved into a journey of self-discovery as she laid bare all of her sordid issues as well as abandoning the funny by bringing in an unfocused and manic character to share the journey making the 80-minute evening just feel loud, scattered, self-indulgent, and pointless.

Longtime Seattlites may remember Weedman from her days with the late-night sketch comedy show, "Almost Live", or some may have caught her more recently in her role in the HBO series "Looking". Here, she's taking on the persona of an old character of her's, that of variety show host Tammy Lisa. But not just Tammy Lisa, she's everyone in the show, Tammy Lisa, everyone working on the show, all her guests, and her new surprise guest Lauren Weedman who doesn't know why she's there. And frankly, neither do I.

The show meanders about with Weedman frenziedly going from character to character and often times stumbling past whatever punch line there may have been. The guests she conjures up for the show are fairly cliché and filled with archetypes, many of which I'm not sure if they were supposed to be real people or inside jokes we weren't let in on. I know one such set of characters were so anachronistic that I'm not sure half the audience really knew who they were. The jokes are there and some of them do land but her delivery hems and haws so much that I just became too tired to laugh. And when she actually does get to the meat of her own story, we've wandered around so far that it's difficult to care and any kind of conclusion or message she wants to convey on all of this never really comes.

Like I said, the laughs do come and she's a funny woman or can be, but this particular show was so all over the place that I found it a chore to slog through to get to the funny. And so, with my three-letter rating system, I give ACT's production of "Lauren Weedman Doesn't Live Here Anymore" a scattered MEH-. Which is really a shame since it started out with such promise.

"Lauren Weedman Doesn't Live Here Anymore" performs at ACT through August 12th. For tickets or information contact the ACT box office at 206-292-7676 or visit them online at www.acttheatre.org.