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Regional Reviews: St. Louis The Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe
The pacing is tight, as the complications of seeking out a free-thinking existence are woven all together into a "God's-eye view" in a show that runs about an hour and twenty minutes. The Search for Signs of Intelligent Life... originally starred Wanger's spouse Lily Tomlin, debuting at the Plymouth Theatre in 1985. It ran for over a year and won a Drama Desk Award for best Unique Theatrical Experience. (The show was made into a movie in 1991.) But this production seems even more transcendental than the '70s themselves, set against a cosmic backdrop with lights to match, designed by Patrick Huber. Ms. Hand glows on stage, as with every show she's in. I always think of her as a young Helen Hayes, with all that natural incandescence. But it bursts forth unexpectedly here, sometimes side-long, as her characters get dragged through false hopes or inexplicable idealism in funny-haha and funny-strange monologs that are strewn with personal reckonings. Rebellious reenactments of fads and marches and protests reveal deeply human moments that ping back to us in later scenes, creating a fresh, playful structure. For the audience, it's like a child's first Easter egg hunt, going back and forth, where each moment of discovery makes you turn back again to grab something equally great, in the form of some other insight you'd nearly passed by. Trudy, a bag lady (who reminds us a bit of Mel Brooks' 2000 Year Old Man) leads us through that grungy decade in New York. Worryingly, she explains her role as a guide to unseen space aliens who've come here to study the human race. And it all gets delightfully complicated from there. But each of the women spinning into view on stage is admirably distinct in a story that spreads out in our minds as well, and into the space between us all. Because theatre is the most transcendental thing of all, of course. The (mostly) earnest characters Ms. Hand portrays on stage rekindle our own memories of self-exploration and meditation from that same decade, and all sorts of post-hippie-era experiments in life with a light, wry touch. Gradually, some of the women in the story are humbled by having children, as the story twists and turns. In one spidery narrative, nearly all the characters end up at the same particular concert, though it strikes a different chord in each of them. I don't think I've ever seen Ms. Hand in an actual state of inebriation, in the last 25 years. But every five or ten years, we see her playing a fascinating drunk on stage. Here, as the wealthy Marge, and elsewhere as a bleary-eyed prostitute in the back of a cab, you just lean in to see how everything falls apart for each of them in a bespoke sort of collapse. Somehow it makes Trudy, the crazy bag lady (and a teetotaler), seem all the more sober. The play turns a kind of firehose of mixed hope and futility on us all in a deluge of reckless '70s nostalgia. It's an onslaught of idealism lost and found that women rarely express to men, even tongue-in-cheek. And when Lyn, a very forward-thinking young mother, finally goes through her own purging yard sale, it's a coming to terms with a bygone coming of age. Her own bemused storyline somehow thrills us all over again with psychological fads that have long since faded away–daring us toward a wild hope that some kind of higher consciousness may still be just about to emerge. In spite of everything we've learned since then. The Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe, produced by the St. Louis Actors' Studio, runs through November 23, 2025, at the Gaslight Theater, 360 N. Boyle Avenue, St. Louis MO. For tickets and information, please visit www.stlas.org. Cast: Production Staff: * Denotes Member, Actors' Equity Association |
