Opening with on-the-street comments from eager
ticket buyers, the pre-show cameos include a brief
interview with Mama and Papa Cho and Margaret
herself. Though she says she's a bit nervous about
having them in the audience because of her show's
sexual and political frankness, Papa Cho chalks it up
as, "A little embarrassing, but it's real." Of
course, Mama Cho needs only a few words to crack up
the audience of cinema-goers.
Taking to the stage with a relaxed patience,
Margaret contrasts her own tribute to rescue workers
with what I think is the most in bad taste,
questionable joke of the show. Then a stint in
drug-related humor, most of the show is dedicated to
straight sex, gay sex, and bi-sexual humor. All
of which is extremely irreverent, sometimes graphic,
and often extremely funny. Her "If straight men had
periods" bit had the audience in stitches, "every
bachelor apartment would be like a murder scene." And
her tangent into bisexualism hosted so many
obscenities, I can't begin to explain it here, save
to say that we were all laughing out loud.
Accenting her already outrageous sense of humor,
intellect, honesty (though I'm not sure how much was
true), and timing, are her classic frozen moments
poses.
Closing on a more serious bit of rhetoric,
Margaret takes aim and fires at the "billions of
dollars spent of advertising and marketing to make
you feel crappy about yourself" all in order to sell
products that can't change you. She winds up bidding
a revolution of self-esteem for those not fitting the
TV-created ideal of beauty. For this, she leaves no
real punch line. And though the point resonates, it's
weakened slightly by her earlier teases of
seriousness (the 9/11 intro, for example).
Begged back on stage for an encore, Margaret
closes her program with a cute Mama Cho camel story
and leaves us to recuperate from laughing so
much.
(CD version available.)
Margaret was born December 5, 1968 and raised in
San Francisco and started performing stand-up at the
age of 16 at a comedy club above a bookstore her
parents ran. Soon after, she won a contest and opened
for Jerry Seinfeld. She moved to LA in the early
'90's and lived in a house with several
performers.
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