Riki Lindhome's new show combines fertility, loss and laughs at D.C.'s Woolly Mammoth
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.
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