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When comedians start flirting with the comedy-theater boundary, they kind of … dress up for it.
A sculpture!So classy.
Comedians come to the theater like theyre visiting somebodys elses church.
But when drama folks slink over the line into comedyland, you see their eyes go wild.
Something about the microphone gives them license for brain-melting bleakness.
The lipstick goes on sloppy.
The audience is in danger.
Thats enough for some of us to immediately clutch a stuffed animal for comfort.
Mounseys delivery in[50/50]was sloth-slow and grave.
Did I mention its a comedy show?
I mean, Mounseysaysits a comedy show.
Theres even a poop gag.
Mounsey talks about a friends attempted suicide.
Maybe its real, maybe its not.Cry-laugh emoji.She expresses her own rage and anxiety and physical distress.LOL.
We never hear her speak live, though its her low voice on the phone.
They didnt talk about it; they played video games.
Brian then asked her to apologize by writing him a comedy sketch about his attempt to kill himself.
Youre a writer, right?
The show we are watching is the result.
They play Brian and Brians mother, cartoonish characters caught in a nightmare scenario.
(Is Brian Fiddyment the Brian from the story?
Is any of this okay to talk about?)
In the third section, Fiddyment hooks up a television, which fills with a CGI version of Mounsey.
As Fiddyment speaks the lines shes feeding him, Mounsey indirectly confesses her own awful misery.
The stunning central portion, in which the stone-faced Weiss is absolutely knock-you-down hilarious, grinds comedys bones.
It also (in about twenty minutes) tackles internet culture and, uh, men.
Its that sulky dog-in-the-manger tone that suffuses maybe 90 or so percent of what guys talk about online.
It seems to me that the shark-eyed confidence of the first two sections wavers, though.
At the same time, my own confidence that I understood the show was also a little unsteady.
I feel so weak and impotent all the time, her avatar says here.
Which makes me hateful.
Which makes me dangerous.
I see all that, and Im impressed.
Does that sound like a fun night in the theater?
While you were partyingis at Soho Rep through December 12.
