Margaret Cho seemed fixated on her own ass, and her notes, as she performed her stand-up comedy Jan. 22.
The popular Korean-American comedian joked to the audience about her tour, smoking weed and the evacuation of her bowels.
Her Ottawa show was originally scheduled for the fall, but it conflicted with Cho’s appearance on Dancing With the Stars.
Cho did her Cho Dependent routine, featuring stand-up interspersed with songs. This is Cho’s eighth stand-up tour, and the songs are off her Grammy-nominated comedy album of the same name.
The songs spoke of loves and pains and her stand-up material was equally personal — most notably “My Puss,” which told the audience, at length, of her related private area.
Stressed by Dancing with the Stars and her stand-up tour, Cho said she lost her voice and had to drink olive oil to sooth it.
Until it came out, she explained. Audience members gave hearty belly-laughs as Cho squatted, pretending herself an olive oil dispenser for salads at Olive Garden.
Cho’s topics were all over, and she had to keep the show on track by glancing at notes, basing her comedy on ass jokes and joking about her tour.
She spoke of flying to her first tour date in September: Provincetown, Mass., a gay-resort town so isolated visitors must fly to the locale on small planes.
With the planes being so small, the pilots need to know passengers’ weights. Cho said she thought she was going to die.
“So it’s me and seven queens. All of us had lied about our weight,” she elaborated.
Little else connected the show’s topics. She seemed lost, and her wit and staggering comedic timing couldn’t bundle the show together.
It felt like too many queens had lied about their weight and the show couldn’t take off. Cho’s show lacked a compelling story: she made it to Provincetown; she made most of her tour dates, except Ottawa; she danced on Dancing with the Stars while touring her show, and the Ottawa date conflicted; she finished Dancing with the Stars, and then her stand-up tour, with only Ottawa left to play; she last performed Cho Dependent mid-December.
Cho stood on stage a month later with notes reminding her of jokes.
As she finished her routine, she sang one last song — to which she forgot the lyrics.
She screamed for her opening act, John Roberts, and the two recalled the lyrics on stage.
“Don’t smoke weed,” she joked, warning that marijuana can cause memory loss. She recalled her lyrics and picked up where her memory had failed.
“But it sucks cause I love you / You’re so perfect to talk to / You make me happy when I feel blue / If only I didn’t have to fuck you,” she sang.
Cho sang resolutely, her earlier off-key musical notes not fazing her. She seemed composed and confident in her material, leaving her notes and singing from her heart, not from the page.
Ultimately, she delivered a funny routine, but it felt just like that — routine, even unpolished.
Thankfully Cho is routinely funny, and in that last moment she sang with her usual gusto.