Stardom power Mike Albo undermines celeb culture BY LIZA WEISSTUCH
	My Price Point By Mike Albo and Virginia Heffernan. Directed by David Schweizer. Set by Jeremy Chernick. Lighting by Rie Ono. Costumes by Luke Simcock. Sound by Ben Johnson. With Mike Albo. Presented by the Theater Offensive at the Boston Center for the Arts through April 30.

David Bowie probably said it best when he sang "Fame, puts you there where things are hollow." In My Price Point, Mike Albo leaps into that hollow space of stardom and slavish devotion to consumer culture and fills the void with hilarious tirades, salutes to the trends we hate to love, and resigned musings about the things we do for love — and for obsession, especially when it comes to real estate and enlightenment. He explores the dark realms of overbearing publicists and Euro envy, all with Jerry Seinfeld’s Manhattan-centric hyper-lamenting, David Sedaris’s raw sarcasm, and Jim Carrey’s spazzy energy.

To hear — and better yet, to see — Gumby-like Albo tell it, we’re all doomed. As a country, we’ve sold our souls to the mega-brand devils. (Witness his account of his job as a drug company’s dancing logo.) Hard-earned cash and individuality are small prices to pay for style and fleeting self-worth, right? If you can’t change the world, might as well get in a few laughs before the cultural Armageddon strikes. So in the dozen or so sketches that make up his one-man show, an adrenaline-charged spree that he rockets through like a pinball, he portrays characters who range from neurotic to mellow to catty to certifiable.

Several of the skits are autobiographical, like Albo’s account of his stint as a writer for Cargo, the men’s fashion glossy he dubs the Death Star of magazines. (But Cargo has more cashmere and it’s gayer.) The journal was produced in Condé Nast headquarters, a "building of constant trendmaking," and his livelihood revolved around encapsulating copy in "haiku concentration" and stomaching the chatter of bratty fashionistas. He was miserable. I know we shouldn’t delight in the misery of others, but it’s hard to stifle the rising giggles when that suffering stems from having to "come up with the perfect sentence to start an article about buying the perfect belt."

Maddening as the gig may have been, it gave Albo plenty of opportunity to refine a snappy, crisp writing style that’s on ample display in My Price Point. In one verbal nugget, he tells us about Eastern European countries where "the economy is so bad, the jeans are naturally frayed." Then there’s the new-age shaman he met in Maui who "created this tincture that makes women really horny."

Albo’s mop of brown hair is tussled, ostensibly from years of running his fingers through it. He often sports a panic-drenched expression that suggests the figure in Edvard Munch’s The Scream, and his wiry body bends in any direction, as he demonstrates in the almost dance-like sketch that takes place in a yoga class. That marks one of three appearances by the Underminer, a character he developed with his pal Virginia Heffernan, a New York Times television critic and his co-writer for My Price Point and The Underminer: Or, The Best Friend Who Casually Destroys Your Life (Bloomsbury). Well, the writers didn’t so much invent the Underminer as christen him/her. S/he is the friend who feeds on your insecurities, who drops names as fast as a stripper does her pants, whose bons mots include gems like "Are you sick? You look tired, is something wrong?" And as a raconteur of downtown Manhattan, Albo spins yarns of the gay club scene, where he’s the object of envy because he has a stalker, and of a slimy real-estate agent whose predatory obsession with selling outlandishly priced parcels swells to a Jorge Luis Borges–like fantasy of building high-end property on a client’s corpse.

Defenseless as he may have been all though his life against the lure of stardom and the influence of the market, Albo gets his revenge in the end. On a stage freckled with Adidas sneakers rigged with red laces that extend toward the ceiling like lasers on a military target range, he bounds in to thank his sponsor. Yes, he confesses, without funds from Adidas, the show couldn’t have been produced. But now that it’s up and touring, it’s his to command, so he fires off rounds of insults that would send the FCC into conniptions and horrify any sponsor. Since he’s already showed us how advertising has warped his — and our — outlook, the ha-ha-on-you moment is triumphant, and reward for the humiliation of dancing around as a logo. Funny how curative just a little fame can be.