Cecily Strong Finds Her Path In ‘Search For Signs Of Intelligent Life In The Universe’: Off Broadway Review

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After 10 seasons at the pressure cooker of Saturday Night Live, Cecily Strong comes well prepared, much loved and properly steeled to her New York stage debut as the solo star in an Off Broadway revival of Jane Wagner’s The Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe.

Good thing, too, since jumping into a role so identified with the iconic Lily Tomlin must surely demand a degree of self-confidence to equal the comedy and acting chops required.Tomlin was already a star when she performed the original Broadway production of The Search… in 1985, but her acclaimed, Tony-winning turn became an enduring showcase for the actress, a performance captured for a wider audience in a 1991 film adaptation.

She even returned to Broadway in a 2000 revival.Filling a role so thoroughly inhabited by its original performer – think Cassie Beck starring in the national touring production of What The Constitution Means To Me – is no doubt challenging, and Strong, while powerless to supplant all memories of Tomlin, has us rooting for her from the get-go.

A less elastic and visually eccentric actor than Tomlin, Strong instead grounds her interpretation of the play’s oddball and appealing assortment of characters with a straightforward, amiable and nicely detailed comic style.All the more disappointing then that The Search…, executive produced by Tomlin and Wagner and opening tonight at the spiffy Hudson Yards venue The Shed, often feels so flat, a casualty of material that once seemed utterly fresh and of-the-moment but now, despite a few feeble attempts at updating, comes off as something of a relic.