My overall impression
(Full disclosure: I am an acquaintance of Laura’s, but don’t know her particularly well.)
How to Hate Yourself is a great sendup of the super-pumped up self-help infomercials that’s wrapped around a moving, courageous one-woman show. House’s stand-up training serves her well in both her writing and acting, and she’s clearly committed to being as unsentimental, rigorously honest, and funny, as possible. The one-woman portions of the show touch on a lot of stuff, from her challenge to find her birth mother to alcohol to guys. (As House herself cleverly notes at one point, “and with [THAT topic], you should now be close to getting one-person-show Bingo!”
A background slide show is used to great comedic effect.
I saw first preview; there were a couple of minor technical issues that I would imagine have been worked out. Strongly recommended.
