| If you like your stand-up
down and dirty, and falling-off-your-chair funny, then you will relish
Margaret Cho, the comic actress now at the Westbeth Theatre Center in her
new show, I’m The One That I Want.
Once upon a time in 1994, Cho was the first Asian-American to star in her own sitcom, All-American Girl. But what with producers who pressured her to keep the weight off, viewers complaining that she was unworthy of her Korean heritage, and drug and alcohol habits which developed long before ABC canceled All-American Girl in 1995, Cho went into free-fall and crashed. Only recently has the 30 year old comedienne managed to pick herself up, write about her near extinction at the hands of drink and commercial television, and perform the sort of stand-up routine with which she began her career when only a teenager. And a hilariously ribald routine it is. Standing on Westbeth’s narrow stage, and wearing a loose black dress, a soft orangey coat, and massive black platforms, Cho smiles broadly, holds her mike relaxedly and holds forth graphically on everything from the rewards of being a fag-hag to the embarrassment of trying sex while drunk. Somewhere in this 80-minute show she also tells the story of how television executives forced her to lose 30 pounds in two weeks, sending her to the hospital with kidney failure. (Her body’s encounter with a nurse is one of the all-time funniest stories you will hear on any stage.) And from time to time she impersonates her affectionate, ingenuous mother, who has a habit of leaving questions like “Are you gay?” on her daughter’s answering machine. What makes one stand-up comedian funnier than another is part of the mystery of personality and comedy, and some indescribable charge that zig-zags back and forth between performer and audience. But in Cho’s case, at least some of her success is her unabashed, Lenny Bruce way of telling things in the baldest words, whether the topic is fag-hags: “I am a fag-hag. Fag-hags are the backbone of the gay community.” Or meeting men: “It was so much easier to talk to straight guys when I was drinking. ‘Hi, Stick it in.’” Or her sexual preferences: “Am I gay, am I straight? And I realized – I’m just slutty. Where’s my parade?” Or her failure to be “the right kind of Korean role model. Because I do not play violin. Because I do not fuck Woody Allen.” Cho’s appeal also comes from sure comic timing, from knowing how to take her audience nearly to the pinnacle of foot-stomping hilarity and then quickly bring them down, and from an ability to talk forthrightly about herself and make fun of her experiences in retrospect. Some people wrestle with culture clashes and personal demons, and are demolished in the process. But the best comics, like Cho turn it into laughter. |