The precise formula is elusive, but comedy rests on setting an optimal distance, just far enough away for a serious struggle to melt into a funny one. In The Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe, the lens is perfectly focused to present 14 odd, sad, silly and striving characters who manifest sincere but ridiculous solutions to life’s big challenges in the 1980s. Playwright Jane Wagner’s stack of wry observations skewers social norms yet looks tenderly at the people indulging in them.
Wagner’s 1985 play was written as a one-woman show for her partner and creative collaborator, Lily Tomlin. Lost Nation Theater has staged it with two performers, using more costume details and a denser set than the original. Maura O’Brien plays Trudy, the narrator, a “bag lady” and self-styled street philosopher. Stoph Scheer handles the remaining roles with changes in costume, accent and vocal register, plus two puppets of her own design and construction.
The preoccupations of the 1970s and ’80s may seem quaint, but our current interests have much in common with the play’s portrayal of self-absorption in an affluent America. In those days, the catchphrase for female ambition was “having it all,” which was the pretzel twist by which women had careers, babies and sex lives, plus some political hope for the Equal Rights Amendment. Today, we might substitute “work-life boundaries” with a side order of personal branding. The philosophy of self-centeredness bridges both eras, and much of the play’s humor transcends the period.
Every fad boils down to a trick for believing in yourself.
The audience at last Thursday’s preview laughed easily, and not all of them sported the gray hair of self-actualization veterans. Some references are in-jokes of the time, but all rest on a larger truth: Every fad boils down to a trick for believing in yourself. Wagner trains her attention on the smorgasbord of self-help options at the time, from aerobics classes to est. The play’s deeper theme is the uneven progress of feminism, soaring toward utopia or sputtering out like a candle in a hand-thrown pot.
The show moves at a jaunty pace. It’s anchored by Trudy’s feisty, joke-spiked riffs on societal oddities. Trudy proclaims herself “crazy,” in the ’80s trope equating mental illness with just another kind of insight. That notion hasn’t aged well, and the cutely named “bag ladies” of the Reagan years have become the homeless, a societal calamity and not a temporary glitch. This production dodges the problem on the strength of O’Brien’s potent direct address and the script’s fun-loving insistence that Trudy is shepherding aliens on a tour of American culture.
The audience essentially becomes the aliens, our eyes trained on what’s terribly funny, and terribly wrong, about the way we live. Interleaved with Trudy’s semi-standup are short sketches that give the versatile Scheer a chance to use voice, movement and quirky costumes to paint people drenched in the mannerisms of the time.
Workout queen Chrissy chats with a friend during a routine. “All my life I’ve wanted to be somebody,” she says. “But now I see I should have been more specific.” The play is filled with people striving for something and falling short, their disappointment magnified by the sheer number of aspirations dangling before them.
Paul steers his life by two ’80s obsessions — he hits the gym in the morning and spends his nights as a cokehead. Teenager Agnus Angst proclaims her punk nihilism while calling a radio talk show to complain about her parents. Socialite Kate contemplates her actual chance of dying of boredom while waiting in a hair salon.
The first set of characters bounces lines off unseen companions, but then the play ups the performance ante by putting characters in interaction with each other. Scheer uses subtle changes in position or voice to portray multiple people in conversation. When seen-it-all prostitutes Brandy and Marie tell a story to a cabdriver, Scheer establishes them both, and soon we’re lost in a tale told by people interrupting each other. The upshot of the story? What it takes to believe in yourself.
Director Kim Bent has assembled a full creative team to design set, lights, video, sound and costumes. They’ve created some great elements, such as a functioning walk/don’t walk sign and screens broadcasting peak 40-year-old TV, but the overall effect is clutter. The show’s hallmark is pure performance, and clever as the references may be, leg warmers and garage sale piles are more detail than we need. The play is stronger when all we notice are characters sketched with the fewest, boldest lines.
Staging it with two actors lifts the work out of Tomlin’s shadow, which could have suffocated it, and Bent keeps the pace very quick so viewers stay stimulated. But the new format also dilutes the solo dazzle, and the pacing doesn’t always give characters the time to think or react; punch lines are punched but sometimes come from nowhere.
Between Trudy’s zingers, O’Brien hits moments of celestial reflection. She carries the play gracefully to its powerful yet funny finale. With childlike wonder on her face, O’Brien offers the warmth that gives the audience permission to feel awe in a world of petty preoccupations.
Scheer starts the show with a character working out and essentially never drops the feel-the-burn energy necessary to create a stream of distinct souls. Her skill is making none of it look like work. Having mastered the mechanics of whirling between roles, she locates a bright purity in each character.
The Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe mocks obsessions but not the obsessed. It’s ultimately a tender look at humans trying to achieve their dreams using only the cultural junk closest to hand. If we laugh at them, it’s really because we’re rooting for them. And for ourselves. ➆
The original print version of this article was headlined “People Watching | Theater review: The Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe, Lost Nation Theater”
Correction, June 11, 2026 9:15 am: This story has been updated to correct the spelling of the character name Agnus Angst.
This article appears in June 10 • 2026.
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