Cosby is as much a storyteller as he is a joke-teller, so he had no trouble holding the audience’s attention even when he wasn’t specifically being funny.
Norton and Attell are old pros with dedicated fan bases from their years on the road and various media projects, and they each played well to the appreciative crowd.
While Steve-O’s jokes focused on explicit descriptions of bodily functions and tales of his Jackass fame, Green’s material was often surreal and confrontational, though he too couldn’t resist indulging in a bit of nostalgia.
People who haven’t experienced a performance by an unprepared, talent-deficient improv group might not appreciate just how impressive the talents of Drew Carey’s repertory players are.
If anyone in the audience was disappointed in the change of headliner, they didn’t show it. When Epps finally did show up, he brought plenty of energy, and the enthusiastic crowd was clearly forgiving.
Despite her willingness to highlight her own eccentric history, the show also felt like Barr’s effort to re-establish herself as a standard, reliable comedian, and plenty of her topics were boilerplate stand-up subject matter.
For all of his astute mathematical analyses of wealth, Gulman is mostly just a laid-back dude making some laid-back observations about life.
Comedians like Peters end up with more money, a higher profile and a more manageable schedule by playing arenas, but risk losing the audience connection that made them successful in the first place.
Hardwick is clearly capable of putting clever spins on nerd-related topics, but one of the perils of his success seems to be that his audience is so grateful for the validation that he doesn’t have to go very far to please them.
A political documentary with a satirical edge in the vein of Michael Moore or Morgan Spurlock. It takes a silly premise and mines some surprisingly insightful political points from it, while never forgetting to be light and funny.
There’s a bit of tension between Martin the absurdist and a more conventional persona that might score laughs more easily, but thankfully the absurdist generally comes out ahead.
(Paradisiac Publishing)
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