A whiff of wistfulness concluded playwright Jane Wagner’s much-lauded comedy, The Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe, at the Aurora Theatre in downtown Berkeley. The one-woman, two-act show, originally written for and performed by Lily Tomlin in 1985—and later made into a 1991 film—began under the sparkly spin of a disco ball and a nearly indiscernible tune selected from a 1980s playlist. Directed by Jennifer King, playwright/comedian Marga Gomez performed 11 different characters while opening up the show’s time capsule-like script in which each line was less a future forecast than a nostalgic salute to a bygone era.
The award-winning play’s tone might have been subdued by the Aurora Theatre Company’s announcement in May that it had suspended the upcoming 2025-2026 season. After 34 years producing marvelous, well-written, astutely directed and performed theatrical works, the company—like many other arts organizations across the nation—has succumbed to financial forces too dire to continue immediate operations. Its future at its current venue on Addison Street remains uncertain, although management said a recently announced partnership with Marin Theatre in producing Eureka Day this September will proceed.
In The Search’s primary role as “Trudy,” Gomez plays a bag lady who’s early on iteration, “Going crazy was the best thing that ever happened to me,” sets the tone for the next two and a half hours. Trudy is frequently “visited” by space chums, who cause her Earth-bound radio signals to be interrupted.
As narrator Trudy’s travel range seems limitless, taking audiences into the minds, mannerisms and misguided messaging of a vibrant vibrator saleswoman, an air-for-a-brain aerobic student, a male gym rat, an uppity hair salon patron, a wannabe punk rocker who subjects her hand to flames while LeAnn Rimes wails the recorded song “You Light Up My Life,” and more. Each character adds layers of associations, from silly to serious.
The play is packed with wit and wordplay that often lands lightly, then burns as it sinks in, like a swift shot of whisky going down the gullet. Other bold truths and blunt statements arrive already packaged with heat and heft, such as Trudy’s comment that no matter how much contempt for the world she has as an unhoused “crazy” person, society always has more contempt for her than she does for it.
The second act offered greater depth and broader assertions about identity, life choices, gender, the damage caused by group think, social justice “blindness,” self obsession, white or socioeconomic privilege, and so on. It all served to underscore a line heard early in Act I, “Reality is nothing more than a collective hunch”—one of the currently relevant ideas in a play that’s more throwback than thrust forward.
Gomez is well known and highly regarded in the Bay Area as the writer/performer of 15 solo plays that have been presented Off-Broadway, nationally and internationally. Undoubtedly, as Gomez enmeshes herself in the various characters, their physicality and vocal tone or accents will grow more distinct. Regrettably, the production at the first Sunday matinee after opening night left this writer craving more …
More abrupt code switching from real to supernatural episodes; more extreme deviations in the physicality, vocal intonation and accents of the characters; bolder use of lighting; a stronger soundtrack. A few well-chosen onstage costume changes from that would have expeditiously transformed Gomez’s green Nike-style athletic suit into something fantastic, quirky, outrageous, timeless or otherworldly.
Even so, along with an imminent closing looming like a backstage shadow, there was hope to be had in Wagner’s magnificent writing and the promise that if it’s not the fittest but the wittiest who survive, our and the Aurora’s candles will at least be snuffed out amid laughter.
