It’s not precisely breaking information on the earth of show-biz satire that actors will be useless, or insecure; it’s been mined. However for so long as time and human consciousness nonetheless exist, there will likely be performers desirous to wring laughter from skewering the vocation they maintain pricey, and audiences hungry for the piss-takes, as in the event that they’re being let in on some commerce secret. Proof that this custom by no means has to get outdated can at the moment be discovered on the Pasadena Playhouse, the place actor/comedian Kate Berlant is enjoying an particularly navel-gazing model of herself in “Kate,” a bizarre and riotous one-woman present. Fellow performers could recognize Berlant’s marvelous cringe-binge most of all, however you don’t need to be within the enterprise to get off on it. In the event you’ve ever locked your individual gaze in a mirror for greater than 30 seconds at a time, that’s in all probability all of the pre-qualifying it’s good to recognize this delirious tribute to self-absorption.

“Kate” earns a variety of its giggles the old style method: by unabashedly zany gags. There’s a hazard in making the present sound too very similar to efficiency artwork — you wouldn’t wish to scare anybody off who simply needs to chortle. But it surely’s bought a relentless sense of journey, if not a powerful whiff of the avant-garde, in the way in which it makes use of combined media and combined moods, protecting you in your toes with as many hairpin turns as might probably be constructed right into a solo present. In fact, Bo Burnham, who directed this manufacturing (as he did with “Kate’s” earlier runs off-Broadway and in London), is legendary for his personal anything-can-happen spirit; he’s a perfect bird-of-a-comedic-feather, in enabling Berlant’s experimental tendencies. If there’s a vital distinction between their efficiency types, it’s that Burnham can stay a cool cucumber within the midst of chaos, the place Berlant actually likes to run sizzling, diving head-first into the comedy of desperation. By the top of the present, she is a UTA-repped girl on the sting of a nervous breakdown. Seeing somebody’s ego splinter could not sound like everybody’s concept of an amusing time, so you will have to belief us on this: watching her crack up is a crack-up.

The present begins on the sidewalk, with Berlant’s identify or likeness sticker-plastered or illuminated nearly in every single place, inside or outdoors of the 99-year-old playhouse. Even the boys’s room just isn’t protected from her fixed branding (though let’s thank somebody for stopping wanting placing Kate’s visage within the urinals). Coming into the foyer earlier than showtime, there’s Berlant herself, roped off and seated with a smartphone and an indication that claims “Ignore Me.” Oddly, on opening night time, virtually everybody did, both not noticing the star of their rush to get seated or simply assuming it was a ringer. (That was her, proper?) She has loads of time to take her place backstage after individuals are seated, as a result of it seems there’s a video pre-show to get by earlier than she emerges; optimistically, this would be the solely time the Pasadena Playhouse ever seems like an AMC. By the top of it, you’ll know not simply her supervisor’s and agent’s cellphone quantity — a lot of the present that follows is introduced as her try to impress a Disney+ bigwig — however see a title card telling us simply how lengthy her tenure on Prime Video’s “A League of Their Personal” lasted (not lengthy sufficient) and whether or not she considers herself a part of the Stanislavski custom (a giant sure).

Lastly, Berlant is on-stage, not as herself, initially, however within the guise of a magical theater janitor, in what’s presumably a nod to the “Carol Burnett Present” cleansing girl of yore. Berlant quickly abandons the character bit and presents as herself, however she’s no one’s concept of a dependable witness in recounting her personal story. Doing an imitation of her mom, she may as nicely be enacting Cinderella’s stepmother; though she already instructed us Mother was Latino, she adopts an inexplicable brogue. (“I’m enjoying with a sure emotional texture right here. It’s one which solely an Irish accent can actually provide you with,” she admits; in a while, when issues actually begin breaking down, she blurts out, “I simply need to say, my depiction of my mom from this present is libel.”) The crux of what narrative this present has involves the fore when the mother taunts li’l Kate with a video digicam, scarring her as she repeatedly warns: “Don’t you realize the digicam requires subtlety? It even registers thought! Your large, crass fashion of indication has no place in entrance of the digicam.” And a deep, damaging, spirit-crushing wound is facetiously born.

Our heroine strikes from the “small seaport city” of Santa Monica to New York, the place she embraces the theater as an escape route from her hearts need to do on-camera work. Speaking concerning the Playhouse itself, which she alternately exalts and insults, Berlant basks in its being “some sort of historic sanctuary” and the way “nobody in Hollywood has ever heard of it… It’s actually liberating to do one thing that’s not slowed down by the skilled stakes of movie or TV.” (Later, she takes that again, as issues go awry, growling to an unseen stagehand that the group is certainly filled with boldface names and “it’s just like the fucking Indie Spirit Awards on the market.”)

Pregnant or awkward silences give the present some dynamics, as Berlant retains letting down her guard, supposedly, continuously teasing the concept she goes to get actual and sincere with the viewers. You virtually consider her, solely to have her yank the poignancy away like Lucy pulling the soccer. It’s to her and Burnham’s credit score that the present by no means offers in to attempting to redeem itself after all of the absurdity that has transpired with some actually sentimental message, nonetheless typically it appears on the verge. For all these emotional crimson herrings, each phase goes to finish in laughs. However will the entire thing finish in tears?

Sorry, that’s not a rhetorical query. “Kate” does have an precise plot, of types, and it comes right down to: Will she be capable of make herself cry, on cue, on digicam? — as if that talent had been the true, sole check of an actor’s skilled and private mettle. No spoilers right here on whether or not that quest is finally profitable; it’s sufficient to know that the chances favor you shedding a tear —of laughter; sure, you bought it — earlier than she ever succeeds in conquering her dry-eyed demons.

An enormous display is employed, at which the Playhouse feels much less like an AMC than an IMAX, the place we see her significantly magnified face doing its finest to evoke bodily sorrow. Her rubber-facedness in these segments has been beforehand in comparison with Jim Carrey’s; that feels apt sufficient, though I additionally considered Laura Dern’s legendarily twisted expression of anguish close to the top of “Blue Velvet.” (Talking of Lynch, there could also be slight echoes of the audition or rehearsal scenes in “Mulholland Drive” and “Inland Empire” felt right here. This present will get virtually that bizarre, in sure moments, in trying in on place the place an abundance of self-consciousness can grow to be a corridor of mirrors.)

For all of its sometimes heady moments, the principle impact of “Kate” will likely be to depart audiences with a giddy after-taste. Following the opening-night efficiency, you possibly can spot folks scrolling by Berlant’s profile on IMDB, prone to see what else she’s performed in the same vein. And why wouldn’t they? Not as a result of that sardonic video prologue begged them to take action. It’s simply that when you’ve seen “Kate,” you’d just about comply with her wherever.

“Kate” is carried out on the Pasadena Playhouse by Feb. 11. Tickets can be found right here.