Margaret Cho’s show, Mother turns out to be the “mother of all bad stand up” rather than an “untraditional look at motherhood”.
Margaret Cho
Comedy can be subjective, but the sole outcome is to entertain and to make one laugh. Cho’s show on Tuesday eve at the Capitol Theatre was crude, vulgar, brutally honest, relatively entertaining yet cringe worthy. In the eyes of the gay and bi-sexual members of the audience she could do no wrong, and her outbursts were met with cheers and hell-yeahs from outspoken punters, but this scribe was completely underwhelmed.
Cho is an uncompromising, intelligent, titillating and honest comedian but failed to deliver on this occasion. Rather than a polished story, it seemed more like a rambling, disjointed, discourse about Cho’s colourful sex life, serving to shock or disgust rather than tickle one’s funny bone or clitoris as Cho would prefer.
Her show began with a true account of Cho being stood up by an Australian woman, but the story wasn’t teased out and structured enough to garner laughs. The performance lacked cohesion and a common thread to keep the momentum going. It was more a woman ranting about random thoughts, and legalising gay marriage rather than a tight, polished story with impeccable timing.
Perhaps the funniest one liner was when Cho states that you have to be careful to choose the right phone number when sexting; “I’m coming right now” to an online pick up, prompted her mother to call her and say “I’m so excited that you are coming over, so soon”.
Cho was not at her finest tonight, and no amount of fart jokes can save a show.
