Oct. 05--Lewis Black is not bringing his brand of angry stand-up to the Chicago Theatre stage until the end of the week, but Margaret Cho's 80-minute set Saturday night, part of her international "The psyCHO Tour," tapped into a very similar vein. Launching immediately into a tirade against the Pope and his meeting with Kim Davis (the Kentucky clerk who refused to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples), Cho used a few choice expletives to describe the duo.
Hey, she knows her audience.
Following opener Selene Luna -- who delivered almost 30 minutes of impressive, fresh takes on being a little person, being an atheist who's afraid of ghosts ("But where are the ghosts of color?" she wondered) and being in a committed relationship with a "normal-sized" guy -- Cho, sporting a pink "I Stand with Planned Parenthood" T-shirt and black leather pants, maintained a high-energy, angry stutter for the majority of the night, hitting on a broad range of topics from ISIS to Rachel Dolezal to police violence.
Discussing her comedy, Cho has said: "I seem to be a secure alternative for people who don't think they're being represented in society. They come because my point of view satisfies a lot of what needs to be said out there." And while a punch line isn't necessary (or even desirable) for every issue Cho raises here, her set sometimes felt a bit too similar to the kind of passionate but ultimately unhelpful posts that show up on various social media.
Certainly she was saying things that many people in this country -- and definitely people in her audience -- want to hear, but we don't go to comedy shows simply to have our viewpoints validated in the same language we use, do we? We look to firebrand comedians like Cho to take the twigs of confusion and the logs of frustration and throw them into a roaring bonfire of clever, cathartic, inclusive, righteous comedy. Reiterating an audience's concerns doesn't take much comedic prowess, and it also doesn't add much to the conversation.
"If Jesus came back today he would say, 'That is not what I meant,'" Cho said, referencing conservative politics. Sure, but tell us what else he might say.
All of this is not to say that Cho is lacking in the punch line department. There's a reason she has Grammy and Emmy nominations and can fill up the Chicago Theatre. Her bits on Donald Trump's political campaign -- most notably comparing his public antics to those of actor Joaquin Phoenix while he was working on the mockumentary "I'm Still Here" -- were excellently structured. She's also a master of truly, epically quotable sentiments like "I think that white people like to tell asian people how to feel about race because they're too scared to tell black people." That's the kind of perfectly constructed joke-of-truth you expect at a show like this.
She also still knows how to surprise: While changing into a shirt representing local gay club Manhole, she started discussing her various tattoos and promptly dropped her pants and turned her back to the audience to give us a full view of two strategically placed tattoos of women's faces.
That's something you won't see in your social media feeds.
Zach Freeman is a freelance writer.
ctc-arts@tribpub.com
