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This review contains spoilers aboutKate.
A year or so ago, I saw a comedians hour-long autobiographical show.
How brave to be so vulnerable!
All that digging down to locate inner truth business?
Excavation of trauma as the best way to be vulnerable?
No, thank you!
Kateopens before you actually enter the theater.
(Excuse me, thetheatre.)
The bench shes sitting on says KATE.
The sign on her lap says IGNORE ME.
Kates total commitment to the bit is the shows most glorious achievement.
The show has a plot, sort of.
Berlant plays the history of herself as a young person who wants to become a performer.
The camera is not for her!
She should never try it!
At every step of this evolution, Berlant plays to the joke of the premise.
During some of those interruptions, the house lights come up.
Surely this hidden traumais the reason she is the way she is.
Berlants performance throughout is exquisite, impeccable, and absolutely deadpan.
Sometimes the leap from big corny character to dry Kate-as-professional-actor feels like a sudden snap of a finger.
(And the Kate laughingatthe audience?
The key production choice is a live camera that sits stage right.
Inevitably, the moment comes when the dark secret must be revealed.
All the signifiers that were playing a silly game fall away: The house lights come up.
She drops all the exaggerated gestures and goofy accents.
She tells the crowd theyre free to react however they like no need to play the good audience.
Its just people being honest with one another for a moment.
And then … splat.
The promise of honesty turns out to be another trapdoor.
When she finally pulls it off, the audience explodes into applause and relief.
We all did it, together!
The emotional vulnerability of that trendy personal-disclosure comedy is still a performance, that tear says.
It is okay to enjoy a performance without needing it to be about something traumatic.
But it is harder to love when the central idea of that performance is that performance itself is good.
The parody starts to feel like a maze or a haunted house.
The first trapdoor through earnestness is a shocking surprise.
The fourth gets tiring.
In that regard, I was thrilled byKate, delighted and happily on board for the ride.
Moss, he said.
For a second, she looked legitimately surprised.
