Who better to turn to at a time of social isolation than an act whose best-known special was staged for an audience comprising just her mum and dad? That was an awkward watch – but happily, Maria Bamford widened access to her latest offering, Weakness is the Brand. She performed several of its routines on her London debut two years ago, before recording this LA performance last year. It showcases a more contented comedian whose volatile mental health (the subject of her Netflix series Lady Dynamite) is now lower in the mix. But weakness is still the brand, she boasts, showing off her trembling hand – and her comedy is as complicated, playful and emotionally exposing as ever.
There’s no unifying theme, save Bamford’s journey towards self-acceptance as she navigates a world that mystifies her, but the routines are united by their complexity. Bamford never talks down to us or pretends things are simpler than they are: see the routine about her ethics, or her refusal to deliver an unpaid commencement speech at her alma mater, the University of Minnesota.
But the jokes are creatively complex too. The one about role-playing “gentrification” and “the living wage” by way of marital foreplay; the intense snorting reaction produced when her husband tells her she’s beautiful – these are jokes that wander far from their original premise in search of rich and inscrutable laughs.
“The important thing about standup comedy,” she tells us with a wink, “is to call whatever you’re doing standup comedy.” But no one’s going to mistake Weakness is the Brand for anything else: Bamford is totally in command of the material, her audience and viewers at home. If the technique is sometimes transparent – rapid switchbacks between timid and feral, barking a punchline to startle us into laughter – the jokes are funny and highly distinctive, like the doozy about the misdirected text from her therapist (“and it helped!”).
“I adore a two-star experience!” she declares early on here, decrying the cult of excellence. But she has not delivered one.
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