Search for Signs of Intelligent Life is Its Own Flashback
Back in 1986, Lily Tomlin won a Tony Award appearing in Jane Wagner's solo show, The Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe, which was a (mostly) comedic double-take on having lived through the consciousness-raising '70s.
Terri Weagant as Trudy the bag lady in The Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe
Looking at the glowing, limber Weagant, we can tell you she did not live through the '70s, or end up on the street in the '80s, but that doesn't detract from her performance. She greets you as Trudy the crazy bag lady, barking on about her space alien chums and making almost-funny jokes that Weagant delivers as if laughter comes as a slap to her alternate reality. It's a bumpy beginning--in the '80s, homeless people had just been discovered, and writer Wagner's understanding of the condition was sketchy (pun intended).
The first act is a warm-up to what Wagner really wants to talk about. As Weagant loosens up, and the characters start popping up rapid-fire, the play gets to its feet, giving you glimpses of discontent leavened with humor. We've been enthralled simply by the texture of Weagant's voice for some time, but here she displays a physical range--from languorous to hyper-twitchy--that leaves you exhausted for her by the end of the night.
Wagner eases into her story with quirky-funny fragments (ah, that's why the broken-mirror appliquée'd set)--there's a woman at yoga stressing about finding a job, a wealthy socialite bedeviled by her own boredom, a teenage-angst-ridden performance artist. (Weagant's socialite is probably her best character, sounding like a cousin of Katherine Hepburn and steering with her chin as if it's a sailboat's keel.)
Then in act two, fairly abruptly, you get a set piece that rifles through the radical '70s in about half an hour, from Indian cotton pants with drawstrings to transformational seminars to lesbian macramé. Today, the knowing, used-to-be-counter-cultural references to pot, organic foods, vibrators, and women trying to "have it all" feels a bit like a made-for-TV movie about The Feminist Pioneers.
But director Lisa Confehr and Weagant zero in on the core of frustration and anguish that Wagner's nonstop, pop-cultural skewering can obscure, and it is this, even after Trudy returns to tie it all up in a bow of messy mystery, that will either get to you or not.
