Riki Lindhome's new show combines fertility, loss and laughs at D.C.'s Woolly Mammoth
Add Axios as your preferred source to
see more of our stories on Google.
Photo: Cameron Whitman
There's an excellent one-woman show currently playing at Woolly Mammoth that's part heartfelt confessional and part bawdy musical comedy.
Why it matters: "Dead Inside," which follows the actor Riki Lindhome's fertility journey, is doing its first fully staged run in D.C. after premiering at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival last year.
- It's produced by comedy power couple Bill Hader and Ali Wong.
State of play: Lindhome, 46, who you might recognize from "Wednesday" or "The Big Bang Theory," went through an agonizing, decade-long journey to have her son, Keaton, in 2022 by surrogate. (She's raising him with her husband, former "SNL" star Fred Armisen.)
- Along the way, she lost a pregnancy, underwent several series of IVF, broke up with the man she thought she would co-parent with, unsuccessfully tried to adopt, discovered she had silent endometriosis, and was diagnosed with infertility.
Woolly Mammoth comped me tickets to the show, and I found myself alternating between crying and laughing while watching it.
- Lindhome rawly expresses the pain she felt during this journey. There was one moment where she was tearing up on stage while the audience (myself included) teared up alongside her.
- But it's also hilarious — Lindhome wryly pokes fun at the difficulty of being a woman and having children (see: a musical number in which she performs scrolling through her phone to pick a male friend who she'd ask to donate sperm), and intersperses the show with laugh-out-loud displays on a projection screen.
The bottom line: During the performance, Lindhome told the audience that she wanted to make her show because she often felt so alone while trying to have a child — and she didn't want other women to feel that way.
- Through her vulnerable, darkly funny and moving performance, Lindhome reminds us that, via art and laughter, the human experience can feel a lot less lonely.
If you go: The show will run at Woolly Mammoth through Aug. 3. Ticket prices vary.
- FYI: The show contains mentions of pregnancy loss and fertility issues.