Review: ‘Tammy Lisa’ at Boise Contemporary Theater is a theatrical roller coaster
Lauren Weedman’s “Tammy Lisa/Misery to Meaning” at Boise Contemporary Theater is a theatrical roller coaster ride, so hang on.
It’s a musical. No. It’s standup comedy. Not exactly. It’s a country music concert. Well, no. What it does is combine all of the above, with a dash of Jungian psychology on the side. That’s the funny Jungian.
“Tammy Lisa,” a one-woman, tour-de-force performance, is as much an experience as it is a show.
Weedman, a veteran theater and television actress and playwright, has performed five times at BCT since she first brought “Bust” in 2007. She works with unbridled verve and energy. She could braid her hair on stage and make it funny.
The show comes at you fast.
Her thing is creating shows that explore facets of her own biography and her experience in the world. This one is born out of her current situation as a divorced, single mother living in Santa Monica, California, with a 10-year-old son. Weedman puts her life out there in a way that blurs the line between fiction and reality, evoking the phrase “You can’t make this stuff up.”
Weedman has a way of finding the twisted irony in any situation to punctuate laughter.
This show has been in the works for about five years with several iterations, including the 2016 cabaret “What Went Wrong?” that she performed in Boise. That was the first time audiences met Tammy Lisa, her inner country star who is deeply inspired by Lucinda Williams.
Weedman wrote the play, inspired by “The Middle Passage: From Misery to Meaning in Midlife” by Jungian scholar James Hollis. I know, it sounds all intellectual, but relax, that context just gives the outrageous comedy some matter. She uses her own creative process as a metaphor for her internal struggle for identity as an artist, a mother and a woman living and working in the center of the shallow end of American culture that is Hollywood.
The script allows room for improvisation, so each performance is nuanced and slightly different. She worked with director Erica Beeney to put the pieces together and then worked with Boise musician Thomas Paul to use a musical score as a thread. Although there have been earlier iterations of these themes, the work is a world premiere.
She plays multiple characters (I tried to keep track but lost count around 10): Veronica, her idealized supermom who can juggle — to a point — her child’s emotional needs, parties, sports, literacy; Reno Snodgrass, an old-school, slow-talking country music producer; her exotic booking agent (“Dahling! I lovf it,”); the title character, Tammy Lisa, her alter ego, a world-weary country singer who mirrors Weedman’s personal journey and inner turmoil.
And, of course, Lauren herself makes a few appearances.
Weedman offers insights about “women of a certain age” (the artist is proudly 51). Some are spot on, such as the mom-conversations at a child’s birthday party. Others are revelatory, especially her personification of an artist-mom, keeping it together for her son, then staying up late to “write” but finding herself drinking between inane tasks to distract her.
As Tammy Lisa, Weedman sings about heartache, lost love, hopefulness, regret. Some of the best scenes are when Tammy Lisa and Lauren connect, or at least try to, and eventually duke it out, a metaphor for a woman working to come to terms with herself.
The show is a brisk 70 minutes, with no intermission, and definitely worth the effort to see. It’s a short run, so you only have one week left.
GO SEE IT
“Tammy Lisa/Misery to Meaning,” 8 p.m. Saturday, Nov. 30; 7 p.m. Wednesday, Dec. 4, and Thursday, Dec. 5; 8 p.m. Friday, Dec. 6; and 2 and 8 p.m Saturday, Dec. 7, with an artist talk-back after the matinee. Boise Contemporary Theater, 854 Fulton St. $28-38 general, $18 students for any performance at BCTheater.org, by calling 208-331-9224 or at the box office.
This story was originally published November 30, 2019 at 6:33 PM.
