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Lauren Weedman's Wreckage named Theatre Pick-of-the-Week

"Perhaps being adopted led to comedian Lauren Weedman's insatiable appetite for attention and validation. In her breathtaking solo show, she homes in on two interrelated stories. The first is a fib she told while a college student in Chicago. Having slipped away one night walking by herself in a fit of melancholy, upon her return, she answered the question of where she'd been with an inexplicable, horrifyingly capricious explanation: “I was raped.” She wasn't. Nobody even harassed her, but rather than come clean with the university psychiatrist — who aptly pointed out that whether she was raped and had failed to report it for a week, or whether she was lying, either way she needed help — she extended the pointless charade. Soon, she was asked to identify her “attacker” from a police lineup of distraught “suspects.” The second story concerns the whys and wherefores of her husband abandoning her during a move to Los Angeles. A female Robin Williams, Weedman spins through dizzying impersonations of multiple characters like a tornado, with perfect timing that's somehow manic and blithe in the same breath. She sustains a beguiling smile while undercutting every moment of tenderness with, “just kidding.” This eventually leads you to ask, when will she stop kidding and commit to something sincere — which is exactly the show's point. Her insane lunges at ever-shifting targets of contentedness add up to a magnetic satire of a desperate culture filled with loners forever on the fly. Jeff Weatherford directs."

- Steven Leigh Morris, LA Weekly, August 26 - September 1, 2005

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