On any given day, the Los Angeles County jail system holds more than 18,000 men and women in custody—160,000, all told, in 2010. Lauren Weedman’s autobiographical play, drawn from her experiences volunteering there as an inmate advocate, is about more than inhumane jail conditions, weaving her visits to the jail with the humiliation and frivolity of the lives of the not-quite-famous. But it is the sense of overpopulation that lingers long past Weedman’s 90-minute performance, perhaps because the work itself teems with life. Where a lesser performer might fall back on narration to convey her reaction to the horror, Weedman, a veteran of The Daily Show and Reno 911, never once breaks character. She is a remarkable observer of behavior, and every person she encounters, in the jail and health spa and audition room, appears fully realized, conveying entire biographies through voice and stance, each of them immediately recognizable. Most of the inhabitants of Weedman’s world are more believable, indeed, than her portrayal of herself: “Lauren” is insufferable and unable to control her need to crack jokes, even at the most inappropriate times, to draw attention to herself, and it is impossible to imagine that anyone could be both this egoistic and so sensitive to the manners and desires of the people around her.


Where: Gerding Theater
Phone: 445-3700
Address: 128 NW 11th Ave.
Website: www.pcs.org