My Cry for Help

Remember the name of Travis Acedia.  Creator and performer of the solo show My Cry for Help, now running at the 2019 Hollywood Fringe Festival, Acedia  is a powerful and  fiery actor who knows how to capture an audience’s attention and hold it tightly in his grasp.

In My Cry for Help Acedia tells a personal story about his lifelong battle with depression.  His honesty is conveyed in a monologue studded with manic bursts of energy and humor in which he pokes fun at himself and at the world around him. There is a lot of anger and pain in the man but not a shred of self-pity,  Dark as his life is, he can still crack jokes, dance, sing and  fire satirical darts at various targets (rap music, radio theatre, Shakespeare).

Acedia works off a straight man much of the time: his stage manager (Jim Nidzeeowslip), who banters with him from his perch in the theater’s sound booth, commenting on -- and criticizing -- just about everything he does.  It’s not until the climax of the show that Jim makes an appearance, a huge, Orson Welles-like presence who delights in pricking Acedia’s pretensions.

My Cry for Help is exactly the kind of play one wants to see at a Fringe Festival: rude, crude, and rule-breaking.  That the actor performing it is something of a marvel is the icing on the cake.