Arts & Entertainment
Breaking all the rules
‘Hung’ star shines in one-woman Studio comedy show
Lauren Weedman in ‘Bust.’ (Photo by Carol Pratt; courtesy Studio Theatre)
‘Bust’
Through Dec 18
The Studio Theatre
1501 14th Street, NW
$35-$60
202-332-3300
studiotheatre.org
If you’re not yet familiar with comedic actress/writer/playwright Lauren Weedman, you need to be. Best known for her stint as a correspondent on “The Daily Show” and playing Horny Patty on HBO’s “Hung,” Weedman is hilarious.
In her mostly autobiographical, one-woman show “Bust” — now at the Studio Theatre — Weedman revisits her real-life experience as a volunteer in a Los Angeles women’s jail. Playing all the parts (inmates, guards, friends, other volunteers, a Manhattan magazine editor and herself), Weedman wittily juxtaposes her time navigating the labyrinth-like, ridiculously bureaucratic correctional system with her equally surreal life as a working actress in L.A.
The way Weedman portrays herself (manic, insecure, largely self-absorbed but coming from a good place), she couldn’t be less suited to volunteer for an inmate buddy program called Beyond Bars. After arriving late and disrupting orientation, she goes on to break every one of the group’s rules. In her first meeting with the prisoners she’s come to help, she reveals her home address, details of her sex life and makes promises she can’t possibly keep (all big no-nos). She’s fairly neurotic, entirely without filter and boy oh boy, is it funny.
Not surprisingly, “Bust’s” authority figures particularly dislike her. The earnest orientation leader assumes (not wholly unwarrantedly) that Weedman is high on cocaine and during the initial jailhouse tour, a seasoned Chicano guard informs her that all those incessant wisecracks will get her killed. She spends a lot of time apologizing all over the place for what’s just popped out of her mouth.
Ably directed by Allison Narver, it’s a fast-paced 90 minutes. There is no set. Other than a rolling ladder and a rolling stool, the stage is empty. Dressed in a white wife beater and black pants, the 40-ish blond actress seamlessly changes from person to person. Not a lot of actors can inhabit more than a dozen characters of varied gender, ethnic background and class with Weedman’s same dazzling incisiveness. Whether it’s a tweaked-out inmate, abusive TV commercial director or the wise senior volunteer named Irene, she’s dead-on.
Toward the beginning of the play when the volunteers share their reason for being there, the Weedman character says she wants to get outside of herself, to think of something other than her weight. Then she lets slip out that she also thought, perhaps, inside jail she might stand a chance at being the prettiest girl in the room. She’s then quick to add that she’s straight — almost entirely so.
Though she does TV and increasingly more feature films, Weedman continues to make time for solo performances. Mined from her life, the plays sometimes contain gay and lesbian characters. In interviews Weedman references gay friends and jokes about how casting agents typically see her as the lesbian sidekick. She has an LGBT following.
Hers is a self-deprecating, smart, outrageous and occasionally silly humor. She simultaneously finds a lot of madness and some meaning in her life. Just when her onstage self becomes discouraged by the prisoners’ self-defeating behavior and afraid that she’s been a totally ineffective volunteer, a prisoner sincerely thanks Weedman for making all those weekly visits. It’s an extremely poignant moment. And then it’s back to more laughs.
The 2026 Capital Pride Parade was held in Washington, D.C. on Saturday, June 20.
(Washington Blade photos by Michael Key, Robert Rapanut and Landon Shackelford)
Theater
‘Feeling Afraid’ explores life of a neurotic stand-up comic
Navigating sex, work, and possibly love in London
‘Feeling Afraid As If Something Terrible Is Going to Happen’
Through July 12
Studio Theatre
1501 14th St., N.W.
$55-$102
Studiotheatre.org
Wordily yet rightly titled, solo show “Feeling Afraid As If Something Terrible Is Going To Happen” dives deeply into the world of a neurotic stand-up comic as he navigates sex, work, and possibly love in London.
Busy arranging hookups and dates on “The App,” the 36-year-old gay funnyman juggles a full dance card; still he’s never been in a romantic relationship. While he’s willing to give love a shot, he’s not pressed about it. As he says, he harbors no fear of dying alone.
Currently making its American premiere at Studio Theatre, this darkly humorous Edinburgh Fringe import features terrific out English actor Steven Webb as The Comedian who’s about to explore what it means to spend all his time with one man.
At Studio’s intimate Mead Theatre, Kat Heath’s minimal set says standard comedy club (fluorescent tube lighting, the mic with a long cord, a single stool backed by a rose-colored curtain), but gay playwright Marcelo Dos Santos has conjured something much more than a live comedy set.
Yes, The Comedian bounces onstage in his red Converse high tops, jeans, and pink shirt with a huge mouth emblazoned on the back, but he delivers more than jokes. At times hilariously self-deprecating, then dark, and occasionally a lesson on what makes standup work, this is a layered, well-acted piece.
With Webb (a keen caricaturist of types and voices) playing all the parts while conducting The Comedian’s hilariously frenetic interior monologue, “Feeling Afraid” takes us through a summer of love. It seems after six chaste dates with The American, our nervous hero has found Mr. Right. The American is earnest, smart, hesitant to initiate sex. He’s also well built with a beautiful smile. And strangely, he’s been medically advised not to laugh aloud.
The Comedian delights in the joys of new love: dates, first kisses, sex, and then suddenly spending all of his time with the adored. Visits to art galleries become fun. Eating home cooked meals followed by grim documentaries is a thing. The Comedian is beguiled as his own boyish figure fills out, but something isn’t right. He can’t entirely relax.
Along the way we meet the Aussie doctor, our protagonist’s longtime hookup; a young runner with some exceptional body parts; the random third in a failed threesome; grumpy working comics, male and female; and an ineffectual counselor.
Webb gives a lightning-fast performance that boggles the mind (in terms velocity and virtuosity). He can be impish, very impish. He’s nervous energy incarnate, flashing jazz hands, grimacing but handsome when still. He’s likeable, a necessity when delivering a hilariously rude joke just feet away from two stone-faced audience members. (Perhaps they were laughing on the inside? At any rate, they stayed through the end the show.)
Produced by the team behind Fringe hits “Fleabag” and “Baby Reindeer,” small stage works that were developed into major TV screen successes, “Feeling Afraid” is funny for sure, and it’s also highly confessional, sexually explicit, and raw.
Written by Dos Santos during COVID lockdown, the piece was a smash hit in the 2022 Edinburgh Fringe before finding further success in London. Its depiction of a youngish queer guy navigating the big city rings entirely true. Like so much Fringe stuff, the one-man show is delightfully lewd and standup inspired.
One little moan: the show closes cleverly but too abruptly with its star dashing offstage without sufficiently basking in the admiration and applause of his thoroughly chuffed audience.
They say third time’s a charm, and regarding “Feeling Afraid,” I’d agree. After two performance cancellations (first for laryngitis and the second involving faulty air conditioning on an especially muggy June evening), I made my third trek to Studio where I found both the actor and AC in very fine fettle. And truly, Webb’s work was more than worth the wait.
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