SeattleActor.com

In Bust, Lauren Weedman’s new solo show at Empty Space, the prisoners aren’t the only ones doing time. A semiautobiographical comedy adventure, Bust weaves tales from Weedman’s volunteer advocacy in Los Angeles County Jail with those of her own personal crises to illuminate not only the prison system and the women behind bars but also metaphorical imprisonments endured by the rest of us. Allison Narver directs the longtime Seattle favorite in this specially commissioned, inaugural mainstage production at the theatre’s new home in Seattle University’s Jeanne Marie and Rhoady Lee, Jr. Center for the Arts.

Bust follows Weedman from her preparation for volunteering at the women’s jail—including the sometimes horrifying, often hysterically absurd training—through her first encounters with actual prisoners. At the same time, Weedman sharpens her comedic wit upon the heartlessness of the Hollywood entertainment industry, the shallowness of social interactions, the cruelties of corporate control, and the inescapableness of one’s past transgressions. She introduces the audience to rules for prison volunteers (Rule No. 1, Kindness is weakness… Rule No. 3, You will be killed.), riffs on the apparently amazing capacity a determined inmate can have for hiding prohibited items in his anus, performs a musical number by a brilliantly horrible socially conscious theatre company that is worth the price of admission alone, skewers the entertainment industry for the cruelty and disrespect with which it treats acting hopefuls (“Dance for Pepsi, bitch!”), and simultaneously ribs those same hopefuls for the tortures they willingly subject themselves to in their quest for fame. In true Weedman fashion, she pokes great fun at her own klutziness, impetuousness, and do-good attitude in a way that is reflective and earnest but never self-important. There’s an almost rapturous moment as this ultimately helpless volunteer melodramatically proclaims to one particularly unfortunate inmate, “I’m gonna get you outta here!”

A master of vocal and physical mimicry, Weedman portrays a dazzling cast of characters made up of inmates and jail personnel, other volunteer advocates, friends on the outside, and Hollywood cutthroats. She draws each character with precision and compassion, allowing the audience to laugh with derision not at the individual but at absurdity of the situation.

Is it funny? You betcha. Is Weedman a riveting, wickedly versatile performer? Absolutely. But Bust is clearly still a work-in-progress. And while it has the potential to be one of Weedman’s best shows, it’s not quite there yet.

The script needs tightened, especially to reduce repetitiveness. The last half hour of the 90-minute show drags. Even so, it ends abruptly on a note that garners laughs but finally rings false and does no justice to the rest of the piece.

Ironically, Weedman’s efforts to add depth by establishing a parallel between the incarcerated women’s experiences and her own transgressions—specifically her bogus claim that she was raped in college—ultimately fail. The intersection between the prison tales and themes of victimization she explores in the fallout from media publicity about her rape story are questionable, at best.

And although there’s no question that the opening sequence is hot—grabbing the audience as if by the throat and promising a scintillating ride—the production team generally misses a great opportunity as far as the movement and music are concerned. The choreography (by Burton Curtis) and music (sound design by Mark Nichols) are bold and exciting, and Weedman executes them well. But while the sporadic, brief music/movement interludes do help generate some forward momentum and formalize a sense of structure, they are little more than window dressing. With further development, they could easily be integrated more significantly and cleverly into the action. The promise of the opening sequence—so strong in terms of its variety, its attitude, its forms and drive—is not fulfilled. It would be far more dramatically interesting and powerful to build on that sequence as a means of shaping structure rather than manufacturing clever music/movement sequences that ultimately serve little more than an illustrative function.

Yet the impulse behind the music/movement sequences, in general, is important. With dozens of characters to keep straight, the audience needs clear anchors and structural organization or else it gets lost in the chaos. On opening night, I heard many people marvel at Weedman’s ability to put on such a wide variety of voices and physical attitudes and, simultaneously, express difficulty following all the characters. The problem, for me, results less from the number of characters portrayed and more from lapses in the otherwise excellent direction: each character is clear and complete, but the transitions between them often falters. The change in character is readily apparent but not necessarily the new context.

Overall, Bust makes for a fun and entertaining evening. It’s a sure bet to break you out of habitual ways of looking at things and keep you laughing.