| |
|
REVIEW:
The Carolina Theatre: Paula Poundstone Was in Top Form,
Riffing at The Carolina Theatre
by
Scott Ross
Ask most people what Improvisational Comedy means and chances
are they’ll assume you’re referring to what happens
on “Whose Line Is It, Anyway?” or (at the other extreme,
and with more preparation) Viola Spolin’s noble experiment
in Chicago, which led to the original Second City and the ascendancy
of its graduates — Alan Alda, Alan Arkin, Barbara Harris, Joan
Rivers, Severn Darden, Roger Bowen, Robert Klein, Paul Mazursky,
and, earlier, Mike Nichols and Elaine May — to the Pantheon of
post-war American humor.
Those are valid responses, of course, but the greater form is
that practiced occasionally by Robin Williams and wholly by Mel
Brooks in his heyday with Carl Reiner: wading in without prepared
remarks. Call it what you will — working without a net, riffing
on the audience itself — it’s the comedian’s equivalent
of an extended jazz break, an ability so uncanny it’s almost
akin to spiritual channeling. And while there are, seemingly, thousands
of comics around, big and small, more than ready to perform what
Spaulding Gray once called “genital-scented humor” (“pop!” “bang!” “pow!”),
usually on the prescribed topics, there are never more than a handful
of true verbal magicians in existence at any one time. Paula Poundstone
is more than one in a million; she’s one in 300 million.
She was in top form last Friday evening, when she brought her
Big Picture tour to convulsively funny life in Fletcher Hall at
The Carolina Theatre in Durham, skewering with deadly accuracy
everything from the ubiquity of Viagra commercials and the media’s
current obsession (in which the news is about “how everyone’s
talking about Martha Stewart”) to her own, much publicized,
difficulties with alcohol, during which she “got a court
order to attend Alcoholics Anonymous — on television.”
Poundstone, as her website correctly maintains, is not a comic “defined
by the usual gender-biased topics of relationships, diets, men,
or sex.” Yet the last time I saw this astonishing American
treasure, at Charley Goodnight’s in Raleigh, some unsung
idiot booked three female stand-ups to open for her, and all
three made endless (and largely puerile) jokes about — wait for it — relationships, diets, men, and sex. It was as though Henny Youngman
had introduced Lily Tomlin.
Although she now works a good deal of material concerning her
foster and adopted children into the mix, Poundstone’s observations
are the furthest thing from the usual young comedian’s applause-milking
pap about family or — more horrifying — the precious, sick-making
bilge we used to get courtesy of Art Linkletter. Poundstone’s
world is one in which her daughter uses cerebral palsy as an attention-getting
device, abandoning her mother to the task of explaining it to strangers
(“Really, she doesn’t fall over any more than the rest
of us”); her son’s grammar school teacher thinks she’s
reading obscenities to the class when the phrase “silly ass” turns
up in Emil and the Detectives; and their school requires parents
to compose something called “Comfort Notes” in case
of emergency.
Poundstone also delivered a phalanx of achingly funny remarks
on any number of peripatetic subjects: the increasing difficulty,
in our age of ear-bud cell phones, to tell CEO from the schizophrenic;
the insanity of injecting man-made fat into our food. Concerning
Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder, Poundstone proved her own manifestation
of the condition — as she phrases it, her “inability to
stop talking” — by regaling us for over two hours, sans
the intermission she forgot to stop for.
I doubt anyone minded. We were all much too busy laughing.
The Carolina Theatre: http://www.carolinatheatre.org/onstage/index.html#paula [inactive
1/07]. Paula Poundstone: http://www.paulapoundstone.com/.
PREVIEW: The
Carolina Theatre: Comedian Paula Poundstone Brings Her Big Picture Tour
to Durham
by
Robert W. McDowell
Controversial comedian Paula Poundstone will bring her Big Picture tour to The Carolina Theatre in Durham, NC, tonight (March 4th) for
a one-night stand that The National Enquirer and other scandal sheets
will not be documenting in breathless purple prose. Her well-publicized
legal troubles — which began in 2001 and ended after six months
in rehab — are behind her; and Paula Poundstone is back on tour,
performing her own unique brand of improvisational comedy, with just
a microphone, a barstool, and a can of Diet Coke for props.
According to her official biography, "…Paula Poundstone's
ability to create humor on the spot is legendary. There's a wonderful
synergy to each of her one-of-a-kind two-hour shows. She improvises
with a crowd like a jazz musician. She'll find an audience member
who sells grass seed to golf courses in part of the state of Maryland
and wonder, 'In such a small territory, even if the grass seed were
any good at all, how could you possibly be working to your full potential?'
— then she swings in another unexpected direction without a plan,
without a net. Paula is so quick and unassuming that audience members
leave complaining that their cheeks hurt from laughter and debating
whether the random people she talked to were 'plants.'
"Known for her honesty, and an off-kilter view of the world,
Paula is currently delighting crowds across the country on her hilarious
national tour, The Big Picture. 'My show is about finding the teeny
tiny part we play in the "Big Picture," like a life-sized "Where's
Waldo!"' says Paula. Never one to be defined by the usual gender-biased
topics of relationships, diets, men or sex, Paula nimbly mixes in
everything from how the shameful deterioration of the broadcast news
industry threatens our democracy, and arguing over a parking space
at the museum of tolerance, to recycling her newspaper with the cover
story on the oil spill, her near-death experience with cinnamon,
and the frustration of living in a house full of pencils with no
erasers. 'How can an eraser that small possibly eradicate all of
the mistakes one could make with all of that lead?' She even handles
politics without provoking the pall of disapproval less artful comics
have received.
"A single working mother, with children ages l3, 10 and 6,
much of Paula's material is based on her life at home in Santa Monica.
The house is never quiet. There are nine cats, a big cat-eating dog,
a bearded dragon lizard, an elderly bunny, and one doggedly determined
ant left from an ant farm. Recently, one of her children was upset
that the family didn't celebrate Easter: 'First of all, it's not
our religion,' she told the child. 'Second of all, you all don't
like eggs. Third of all, you guys don't look for anything.'
"'I love doing my job,' Paula says. 'It's a privilege to perform
for people who come to see me and I would do it if there were only
six, although I'd have to up the ticket price.'…
"Paula grew up in Sudbury, Massachusetts (a suburb of Boston)
and began performing at open-mic nights in 1979. She was among a
handful of comics who rose to prominence during the comedy craze
of the 1980s, and her talent was so genuine, she was still standing
when the fad subsided. Paula credits her kindergarten teacher, Mrs.
Bump, with her success in comedy. Bump stated in a 'summary letter'
sent to Paula's home in 1965 that 'I have enjoyed many of Paula's
humorous comments about our activities.' Paula says, 'she found something
positive to say and expressed an adult interest instead of squelching
my sense of humor. In the first grade, Miss Carter wrote I was subject
to emotional outbursts and that I had poor penmanship. That didn't
help at all.'…
"Paula has lent her services to help raise funds for several
causes she believes in, including legislation for gun control and
campaign finance reform, healthcare for the homeless, the Democratic
party, the ACLU, Planned Parenthood, and Actors and Others for Animals.…
"While she has amassed an impressive list of accolades in print
and on stage, Paula is a dedicated single mother, so the majority
of her time is spent at home, with her children, where she watches
steadily improving cartwheels, denies junky snacks, tries desperately
to remember the parts of speech, corrects long division, listens
to Nancy Drew read aloud, overcooks noodles, and tries to explain
that life isn't always fair, but that right now it's Thomas E's turn
to use the pogo stick. She says things couldn't be better."
The Carolina Theatre presents Paula
Poundstone in The Big Picture Friday,
March 4, at 8 p.m. at 309 W. Morgan St., Durham, North Carolina.
$21-$24. 919/560-3030. The Carolina Theatre: http://www.carolinatheatre.org/onstage/index.html#paula [inactive
1/07]. Paula Poundstone: http://www.paulapoundstone.com/.
|
|
