“So, fuck, right?” is how Marc Maron kicks off his standup show on Friday night at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. Everyone in the sold-out opera house knows what he is referring to – it has been exactly one week since Barack Obama sat down in his garage for a freeform, heartfelt chat on Maron’s now-famous WTF podcast. He knows this will be a topic constant query for a while and he concedes that now “it’s gonna be hard to present myself as unhappy.” But Maron largely avoids politics and grandiose thoughts on that momentous occasion; he talks instead of his concern for his cats and the anxiety of potentially sacrificing precious American Express points to make the interview happen.
“OK, let’s try to do some comedy,” he says in an effort to move towards the real show, though precisely planned performances have never been Maron’s style. The crowd is clearly filled with devoted podcast listeners who know and love the laid-back, confessional vibe that Maron has established on WTF and carries into his live show. Just the idea of him getting agitated at a Dunkin’ Donuts is enough to get the crowd excited, and when he begins a bit by saying, “It’s not that I’m insecure,” the crowd roars with laughter.
But far from relaxing into this attention and approval, Maron seems amped by the devotion. He takes joy in pulling his audience deeper into his own psyche, looking for the inner place too dark for them to follow. (He came close with a particularly graphic sex bit that he gleefully acknowledged was approaching the line.)
He’s fully embraced a certain persona, often describing his status as a twice-divorced, childless 51-year-old with two cats. He mostly sits now for his sets, jumping up occasionally to pace the stage or act something out. For all of his talk of self-loathing and his tendency towards angry neuroticism, his performance has the effortless quality of a 30-year veteran; even his seeming tangents into breakfast cereals and the Ten Commandments are deceptively well formed.
(In Mike Lawrence, Maron wisely chose an opening act with a contrasting approach. Lawrence is one of the finest joke writers in his generation, and his opening gambit – “Gay marriage is legal and people are telling dicks jokes in an opera house. This is the America I always wanted” – set the tone perfectly for the night.)
Regular podcast listeners know all about Maron’s romantic life, so it’s not shocking but still refreshing to hear him talk so honestly about love and sex with different partners. He’s one of the few comics who can drop a line like “You can’t hide the humility of time crushing you” and not have it seem out of place. He returned again and again to the topic of religion, not a surprise from a man who wrote a book titled The Jerusalem Syndrome: My Life as a Reluctant Messiah.
An audience Q&A session toward the end somewhat slows down the momentum of an otherwise well-paced show. It’s hard to tell if Maron is indulging the audience or the other way around, but the crowd keeps throwing out questions, and he answers each one with gusto. It threatens to overshadow his closer, a strong, tightly crafted tale of his struggle with willpower and discipline in the face of ice cream. Filled with callbacks, it’s a perfect Maron routine – anger-driven and shame-ridden but made better by his ability to share it with us all.
