4 days ago
- Entertainment
- Washington Post
She went through hell to have a child. Now, she sings about it.
Riki Lindhome doesn't claim to be a fertility expert. But after the actress and comedian navigated a decade-long path to welcoming her son, Keaton, via surrogate in 2022, she realized her lonely, often-traumatic experience gave her a perspective worth sharing. As the 46-year-old says, 'Women's bodies are secrets, and they shouldn't be.'
So time and time again, Lindhome found herself speaking with people interested in starting a family — friends, acquaintances, strangers — and reliving some of her life's most difficult chapters. There was the pregnancy that didn't last. The slew of subsequent surgeries. The taxing rounds of IVF. The boyfriend who abruptly left her. The frozen embryo she had to let go. The fraught attempt at adoption. The silent endometriosis diagnosis. The discovery of her infertility.
'I'm realizing I never had these conversations when I was going through it, and there's something sad about that,' Lindhome says. 'I just felt I had to do it all by myself. I was like, 'Wow, I really do have a unique point of view on this because I have gone through all of it — and was unsuccessful at all of it.''
Thus Lindhome decided to tell her tale in her language of choice: musical comedy. After all, she co-created the Comedy Central sitcom 'Another Period,' starred in 'The Big Bang Theory,' 'Wednesday' and 'Knives Out' and is half of the satirical song duo Garfunkel and Oates (alongside Kate Micucci).
Written and performed by Lindhome, the autobiographical solo musical 'Dead Inside' premiered last summer at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe. As a starkly confessional memoir, the show tugged at heartstrings. Amusingly self-aware, it also tickled ribs. Having since staged 'Dead Inside' in Los Angeles, New York and Austin, Lindhome has come to D.C. for the show's first full-fledged production, at Woolly Mammoth Theatre, with comedic powerhouses Bill Hader and Ali Wong newly attached as producers.
'It's a show with a lot of heavy themes but told in a really humorous way with a lot of heart,' director Brian McElhaney says. 'We don't shy away from the really dark parts, but we also — in classic Riki style — have just the sharpest, funniest, most sardonic songs.'
A lifelong showtune aficionado, whose obsessions growing up in Upstate New York included 'A Chorus Line' and Weird Al Yankovic, Lindhome has long striven to write a musical. But it wasn't until the idea for 'Dead Inside' took root that she considered penning one for herself as a star vehicle.
'To me, musical theater performers are the Olympic gold medalists of vocalists,' Lindhome says. 'I feel like my voice is fine for a comedy singer [and] I do great at karaoke, but they have these strong, crazy, one-in-a-million voices. So anytime I pictured myself writing a musical, I never pictured myself in it.'
Lindhome stumbled through early stabs at a script for 'Dead Inside' before deciding to not only center herself but ax other superfluous characters entirely, following advice from playwright Halley Feiffer. 'I was like, 'I can get rid of that character. Get rid of that one,'' Lindhome recalls. 'It just kept narrowing down, until I was like, 'Oh, I think this is just me.''
Lindhome was catching up on Broadway musicals with the actor and comedian McElhaney in the summer of 2023 when she mentioned the concept for 'Dead Inside' over postshow oysters. Having recently returned from Edinburgh, McElhaney responded to her idea with a pitch of his own: He should direct the show, and it should premiere at the following year's Fringe.
'I knew this was a story that a lot of people are probably going through in silence,' says McElhaney, who met Lindhome while working on Joss Whedon's 2012 film adaptation of 'Much Ado About Nothing.' 'It just struck me in the moment that it was a very, very good idea. And if there's anyone that could pull that off, it would be Riki.'
She eventually started writing the numbers and workshopping them around Los Angeles — at comedy clubs, black box theaters and, at one point, a parking lot. Although she had the narrative outlined for months, she didn't dash off a full script until a few weeks before the Fringe. After unofficially debuting 'Dead Inside' with a couple of staged readings in Los Angeles, Lindhome took the show to the Fringe and continued to shape it.
'We were basically building the show from scratch as we were performing it live for these audiences, which is super terrifying,' McElhaney says. 'But Riki was absolutely game. She never let anything faze her.'
Ultimately, 'Dead Inside' took form as a monologue intercut with onstage projections and those farcical songs, such as 'Middle Age Love,' 'Hysteria' and 'Don't Google Mommy.' But as much as Lindhome strives to lighten the weighty material, she doesn't shy from the toll of revisiting her trauma eight times a week.
'It's not fun,' Lindhome says. 'It really isn't. But I do feel like good art costs you something.'
Although past performances saw Lindhome take the stage with little more than a keyboard, a guitar and the projection screen, the Woolly run has her on a set inspired by 'the Infinite Forest' — a female spin on the hero's journey referenced in the show. Emmy-winning choreographer Kathryn Burns also came onboard.
Lindhome aims to bring this version of 'Dead Inside' to other cities and, eventually, capture it on film. Asked about the idea of 3-year-old Keaton — whom she co-parents with her husband, actor Fred Armisen — seeing the show, Lindhome offers a warning: 'Well, this is going to make me cry.'
Sure enough, waterworks ensue as Lindhome pauses to collect herself and processes the possibility of 'Dead Inside' living on as a time capsule for her son to discover.
'If he's ever mad at me, I'll be like, 'No, this is how bad I wanted you,'' Lindhome says. 'It's like a love letter to him.'
Woolly Mammoth Theatre, 641 D St. NW.
Dates: Through July 27.
Prices: $31-$41.
