by Jim Dewey
Mary Lynn Rajskub’s show, The Complications of Purchasing a Poodle Pillow, closed last week — after a month’s run of Sundays at the Steve Allen Theater in Hollywood — to a fully-packed house. Already, you’re asking “why are you writing about this now?”
…because dear reader, I’m still reeling from it.
Although I can hardly call myself a professional MLR reviewer, having only been to three previous performances of hers, I find myself with each new performance wondering– ‘is she real, or is she… acting?’
Allow me to explain.
Ms. Rajskub has cornered the market when it comes to roles of self-doubt and disdain for the world in her time on the screen, both big and small– from her turn as a jaded, self-pronounced killer in her short film “The Hitman”, a grouse of a sister to Adam Sandler’s character in Punch Drunk Love, to her portrayal of passive-agressive, socially awkward tech hottie Chloe O’Brian on TV’s 24.
And that continues over to her performance onstage, and allegedly into her real life — the girl is rife with self-demeanor, pacing the stage like a cougar, constantly re-adjusting the height of the mic stand, lurching back every time it pops up to her face as if she’s been hit with a water pistol. Be it the overzealousness of paying Cuba Gooding Jr. a compliment at a show and kicking herself for it, or the near failure to break up with her then-fiancee when she realizes she’s more man than he is, she finds a scab on her life and picks at it until the crowd in front of her laughs.
She gets onstage, sucking you into her rather normal life — it’s only when she mentions getting the red-carpet treatment that even then she still makes the audience feel like she’s just visiting Hollywood, fresh off the bus; because for all the puffery of meeting people more famous than you or I, she still gets excited to see them and talk about it; it’s more “squee!” than name-dropping.
And cohesion — forget about it. One minute she’s talking about a self-help guru and the bohemian nutjob with smelly feet at the retreat sitting next to her, the next she’s talking about writing a curious letter of intent to Rush Limbaugh about whether there’s a spark between them, because a jealous ex heard about the right-wing nut inappropriately kissing her at a panel on terrorism. She’ll also stop a story right in the middle, with absolutely no closure, simply because she thinks it’s a tale not worth telling; then furrow her trademark brow for having started it in the first place. Or is it … planned? If it is, she should have been up for shiny, polishable awards a long time ago, because there always seems to be a hint that she’s a lot more confident than she lets you on to. The voice slips, and an air of defiance escapes her lips, betraying her otherwise eye-rolling life.
Her comedy style is dangerous for an audience used to a machine gun rapid-fire set, joke after joke — but with her, any story could ramble on for minutes at a time, with not even a hint of humor seemingly anywhere in sight. She’s Barney Fife groping for his lone bullet in his breast pocket, trying to point the gun and fire. But this is the secret weapon of Mary Lynn Rajskub: from out of the dark tale of banality fires the stinger, and in the end, it’s a cannonball of a laugh. It’s not easy to teach an audience patience, especially when you might very well pull the rug out from under them and not even finish the tale … but for a girl from Michigan who frowns at either herself or the idiocy of the L.A. lifestyle, she’s going to enjoy it while it lasts.
I just wish I knew if she was faking it, because with every step of immediacy around the stage, every “what the hell was that?” reaction to an audience member laughing at something unintentionally funny makes me want all the more to believe she’s real and genuine as they come, and that she’ll be back some day for another 80 minutes of awkward bliss.
Photo by Marianne
