Mysterious playwright Jane Martin has always been known for her sometimes-savage wit, and that comes to the fore in “Somebody Nobody,” now playing at the Mixed Blood Theatre.

The play takes an insightful look at the culture of celebrity, and along the way takes plenty of potshots at folks of various political leanings. In “Somebody Nobody,” Loli is just that: a lowly nothing who has fled Kansas for the bright lights of California. Instead of finding stardom, Loli instead lives alone in a grungy apartment, broke and having just been fired from her job repairing trucks.

Her life gets turned upside down when B-grade movie star Sheena Keener shows up at her door, desperate to get away from the fame that she worked so hard to attain. As Sheena and Loli try to work out their own issues, two forces of nature threaten: ­ Joe Don, Loli’s isolationist bounty-hunter second cousin and Galaxy, Sheena’s predatory agent.

You get the idea. Things play out in unexpected ways, and there's plenty of time for jokes aimed at new agey organic obsessions, God-fearing red states and the characters’ own foibles (Joe Don cut off a man’s ear for ordering a Danish beer at a bar). The hits are stronger than the misses, and Martin does well to poke her stick at both sides of the political divide.

There’s also a serious heart here. Both Loli and Sheena are intensely lonely people who are caught up in the dream that all they need to be happy is for people to pay attention to them. Both discover that the truth is more complex ­ — and painful ­ — than that.

The cast is strong throughout, centered in Taj Ruler as down-to-Earth Loli and Elizabeth Grullon as the spacey Sheena. Ruler’s character is loaded with self-doubt, but she also lets us into the character’s inner strength. That conflict stays with her until the very end, even when Loli finds herself in a much better place in her head. It's easy for Sheena to just be a cartoon, but Grullon also lets us behind the plastic surgery to the scared person underneath. Joe Don and Galaxy are much sketchier characters, but Brandon Morris and Mo Perry play the humor well ­— and even manage to find the beating hearts of those characters as well.

“Somebody/Nobody" runs through March 14 at the Mixed Blood Theatre, 1501 S. Fourth St., Minneapolis. Tickets are $14 to $28. For information, call (612) 338-6131 or visit online.