TV REVIEW : Rich Insights in Shear’s Solo Show of ‘Life’

“Blown Sideways Through Life” is a comical and poignant whirlwind of a solo theatrical flight that wrings luster, amazingly enough, out of a young woman’s autobiographical tour-de-resume.

Writer-performer Claudia Shear dramatizes in quick, vivid brush strokes many of the 64 jobs she has held in her life while wanting to become an actress--among them, cosmetics saleswoman at Bloomingdale’s, nude artist’s model, receptionist in a whorehouse, waitress (several times over), burger chef, extra in an Italian movie.

An Off Broadway Obie citation winner last year and adapted for PBS’ “American Playhouse,” the play was shot before a live theater audience.

But often director Christopher Ashley’s camera strays to outside locations and once, in Shear’s touching tribute to Buster Keaton, to a movie house where she sits under the projector’s smoky light viewing a great clip from Keaton’s movie “Cops,” in which he’s a fugitive chased down a big empty urban boulevard by hundreds of baton-waving officers.

The moment astonishingly illustrates Shear, a self-described “Flatbush misfit,” as a fugitive and “kindred spirit.”

Amusingly assuming the voices of many of her employer-tormentors--”Punch in, punch out, be on the floor, no reading allowed, no personal calls. You don’t like it? It’s my way or the highway”--the chameleon-like Shear, with her rich sense of physical detail, shows us that identity is deeper than any job description.

* “Blown Sideways Through Life” airs at 10 tonight on KCET-TV Channel 28.