By all rights, fifteen years ago, Mark Lundholm should have been lying dead somewhere - and he would have deserved it. An addictive personality raised in a violent home, Lundholm moved from alcohol to drugs, eventually ditching his wife and kid for a life of crime to support his habits. But just when he was ready to pull the trigger on the gun to his head - literally - he decided to give rehab one more shot. The light at the end of the tunnel became, of all things, stand-up comedy, which Lundholm puts to good use in his solo, Addicted...a comedy of substance, now at the Zipper Theater.
Not surprisingly, Lundholm has enough energy and intensity for two men, and his story, spiked with jokes, compels. The piece's structure could use a little re-jiggering - there's a point at which the story seems to wrap up, then jumps back in time to take a different tack. But the climactic moment is quite touching, and director Bob Balaban and the design team complement the show's best idea: personifying the Freudian divisions in Lundholm's personality that, to a lesser extent, reside in all of us.
