Cecily Strong at the Shed in The Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe

A homeless woman who communicates with aliens, “Trudy” opens the show, The Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe, created by Jane Wagner in 1985 for her then partner, now wife, Lily Tomlin. Revived at The Shed, under Leigh Silverman’s astute direction, the baton for dispensing planetary consciousness is passed to Saturday Night Live’s comedic virtuoso Cecily Strong. As Trudy, she wears an ill-fitting coat, its lining bedecked with post-its. How else will wisdom be saved in a world accustomed to one-liners? More aptly, how will this wisdom be communicated to the life beyond our atmosphere? A gimmick maybe, but at the show’s end, audience members picked up post-its on their way out. My bright green one reads: “Humanity’s biggest hurdle is human behavior.”

Ha. What do aliens care about human behavior? That is one question addressed by Strong as she incarnates other characters, for example, sex workers, Brandy and Tina. The show is a tour de force as Strong, shedding into workout wear does time at the gym, and teaches the most teachable lesson, riffing on Andy Warhol: This is art. This is soup. Art. Soup. The show makes you think about how all of our conceits might play to outsiders. The metaphysical becomes a leitmotif, asking us to ask of our givens what might not be obvious to those dropping in from other galaxies. Bravo to the genius originators, and to Cecily Strong for raising these concerns as we watch our planet devolve to frequent natural disasters and a two-year pandemic. Someone up there may be laughing, and at least for the 90-minute duration of the show, the audience laughs at our –eh, human--predicament.