Heavy Thoughts

Eric Edwards lost 210 pounds by walking a few miles in other people’s shoes. In “The Weight is Over,” a one-man production at Playhouse West in North Hollywood, Edwards takes the audience on his trail to lose weight.

Although he consulted a personal trainer to help him slim down, Edwards’ focus in “Weight” is about understanding the emotional factors that led to his triple-digit weight gain by portraying some of the influential people in his life. He plays the roles of his lesbian mother and her girlfriend, his deceased father, boyfriends of women he’s had crushes on and James Dean as “the rebel without a male role model.”

“I had to deal with the emotional weight to conquer the physical weight” Edwards said in a recent interview.

The 34-year-old actor, who now weighs 155 pounds, draws on his comedic background (he played the funny fat guy in a string of movies, including “Sgt. Bilko,” “Blade,” “The Little Rascals,” “National Lampoon’s Senior Trip” and “Problem Child 2”) to find the humor in the most poignant and critical moments in his life.

The play, which Edwards co-wrote with Ken Dubner, takes place in Edwards’ North Hollywood apartment as he cleans out his closet, discarding remnants of his plumper days. He traces a series of events across the U.S. that led to his trying to eat his way to happiness. In Georgia, there’s the day his French immigrant mother “comes out” and introduces him to his “new father, Suzanne,” who bears a striking resemblance to Jan-Michael Vincent. Edwards illustrates his fatherless confusion to the audience by donning a red jacket and striking the classic James Dean pinup pose while exclaiming “I was a rebel without a male role model.”

His father, a two-term Vietnam vet with a “never-leave-a-man-behind” mentality, attempts to “rescue his boys” by kidnapping Edwards and his brother and moving them to Hawaii, only to die shortly afterward of an Agent Orange-inflicted cancer.

After his father’s death and “a Kansas funeral buffet that makes Sizzler look like a health-food bar,” Edwards moves in with his aunt and begins to eat away his pain.

Throughout the play’s obviously painful stories, Edwards’ humorous and timely observations serve as the backbone to his life story onstage and off. He chooses not to dwell on all the choruses of “C’mon, get happy” that he interjects in the play and just moves forward one step at a time. He hopes audience members are inspired to do the same.

“Every change in your life happens by taking one step,” he said. “Your problems may seem as intimidating as a marathon, but you just have to take that first step--take a leap of faith.”

Although his play is about being grossly overweight, Edwards believes it has widespread appeal. He said the weight serves as a symbol for emotional pain, which can manifest itself in a variety of ways for different people: drug or alcohol abuse, anorexia or excessive tattoos and body piercings.

“We all have things that weigh us down,” Edwards said. “Weight doesn’t equal pounds. There are 90-pound anorexics that have the weight of the world on their shoulders, and anyone who abuses anything can identify with the subject matter.”

Theatergoer Anastacia Rosenthal said she was depressed the night she saw the play. But she was moved by a scene in which Edwards re-creates the night he considered suicide. A 4 a.m. phone call from a long-lost friend ultimately deterred him.

“Eric was my 4 o’clock phone call,” Rosenthal said. “He saved my life that night. I went from the extreme of a 4 o’clock phone call to being happy to be alive. I did a total turnaround.”

BE THERE

‘The Weight is Over,” Sunday and Feb. 18 at 7 p.m. at Playhouse West-Studio Two, 10634 Magnolia Blvd., North Hollywood. Free. Call (818) 971-7191.