Saturday night at UIC Pavilion, comedian Amy Schumer, the first female comic to headline Madison Square Garden (which she played twice this year) and the first female comic to make Forbes' Highest-Paid Comedians list (she appeared at No. 4 with $17 million earned this year), spent 70 minutes talking dirty to a crowd of eager fans.
"If you came with your family, that is on you, and you are stupid," she said early on, before casting herself as the id of the female experience and confidently relating her sexual confessions and less-than-sexy follies while doling out blunt takes on sex in general (e.g. "If I'm laying on my back during sex … and I am").
Yes, the majority of Schumer's material centered on sex and is unprintable. And the mother half of a mother/daughter duo seated next to me did start to gape only a few jokes into the set, as if realizing that she had, in fact, made a terrible mistake (perhaps not in buying the tickets in general, but certainly in buying herself a seat beside her daughter).
The character Schumer inhabits on stage is a bit of a sex-obsessed caricature crossed with her real self (I assume); perhaps "stage Amy" is the devil on real Amy's shoulder who whispers dirty thoughts in her ear but doesn't always get to take control. Whatever the case, it's a persona that has been working for years, from her stand-up specials to her Emmy-winning Comedy Central show "Inside Amy Schumer" to last summer's Judd Apatow-directed "Trainwreck" (written by and starring Schumer).
The night opened with jazz trio Locksmith Isidore, fronted by Chicagoan Jason Stein (who happens to be Amy Schumer's older half-brother) playing a 20-minute set of what I found myself calling "please take your seat" music, as the arena filled. The group wrapped up with a song aptly titled "Amy Music."
After a brief clip highlighting scenes from "Inside Amy Schumer" comedian Mark Normand delivered a 15-minute opening set that took a bit longer than it should have to find its footing. "I'm staying on the South Side, so I ran here," he quipped to relative quiet. After an audience member cheered he shot back, "You too? You're still alive!" Crickets. Normand eventually recovered and hit his stride midway through his set, finishing strong and introducing Schumer to the stage.
In a red dress and heels, with a bottle of wine on stage in place of water, Schumer stuck with what has been working, playing up the party-girl angle, even while working in bits about her current boyfriend (who's from Chicago), her relatively recent ascent to stardom ("This year I got very rich, famous and humble") and her dedication to gun control (in a sobering moment she talked about two women shot to death in a theater while watching "Trainwreck").
"This is my favorite thing to do," she said of stand-up in the opening few minutes. A lot of what comedians say is questionable, but this sentiment seems almost certainly true. Schumer released a best-selling book this summer ("The Girl with the Lower Back Tattoo") and has a film co-starring Goldie Hawn due out next year. But Schumer's not behind a keyboard or on a movie set. She's on a 54-stop world tour telling live jokes. (A tour she put the fifth season of her "Inside" show on hiatus to make happen). It's clear she loves it. And she knows how to play even small moments to a crowd of thousands.
"This does not leave … this arena," she said at one point, looking around conspiratorially and subtly juxtaposing the intimacy of her stories with the vastness of the stadium, before revealing what would be an embarrassing sexual experience to anyone less self-assured.
The beauty of Schumer's shtick — and, let's be honest, any comedy that works in an arena setting is going to be at least edging into shtick territory — is that she presents bold self-possession without a hint of either self-aggrandizement or self-deprecation. Schumer is proud of both her accomplishments and her foibles because they are what make her human, and more specifically, what make her her. Leading by example, she asks all women to embrace all aspects of themselves.
And though she may mock men from time to time, she spends as much time asking that women mirror their male counterparts in certain regards, rather than simply crying foul at societal double standards. All of this empowerment is encased within a solid stream of exaggerated (but fundamentally honest) sex and body humor.
"You have been one of my favorite crowds of all time," she declared near the end of her set. "And I promise you, I didn't say that last night." No one said she always tells the truth.
Zach Freeman is a freelance writer.
Twitter@ZachRunsChicago
Source: Chicago Tribune
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