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‘Kate’ Review: Kate Berlant Navel-Gazes, Hilariously, in an Unpredictable One-Woman Show at Pasadena Playhouse
'Kate,' now playing at the Pasadena Playhouse, gets big laughs from Kate Berlant's highly fictionalized version of herself, as directed by Bo Burnham.
But for as long as time and human consciousness still exist, there will be performers eager to wring laughter from skewering the vocation they hold dear, and audiences hungry for the piss-takes, as if they’re being let in on some trade secret. Talking about the Playhouse itself, which she alternately exalts and insults, Berlant basks in its being “some kind of ancient sanctuary” and how “no one in Hollywood has ever heard of it… It’s really liberating to do something that’s not bogged down by the professional stakes of film or TV.” (Later, she takes that back, as things go awry, growling to an unseen stagehand that the crowd is indeed full of boldface names and “it’s like the fucking Indie Spirit Awards out there.”) Her rubber-facedness in these segments has been previously compared to Jim Carrey’s; that feels apt enough, although I also thought of Laura Dern’s legendarily twisted expression of anguish near the end of “Blue Velvet.” (Speaking of Lynch, there may be slight echoes of the audition or rehearsal scenes in “Mulholland Drive” and “Inland Empire” felt here.
Or read this on Variety
