Joan Rivers: A Work in Progress by a Life in Progress
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Rivers
Photo by Michael Lamont
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By Melinda Schupmann
Her signature, "Can we talk?" helps us recognize the durable, outspoken comedienne who has been a player in the comedy world for decades. A victim of the relentless need for youthfulness, she has been virtually airbrushed by plastic surgery into a place where it is hard to recollect the original face that smiled out at us from talk shows, QVC, Las Vegas, and any other place where she could deliver her famous comedy routines.
She takes care of any notion that she is unaware of reactions to her plastic surgery by using that self-deprecating wit she is known for. And then the show can get going. The shtick is that she is backstage in a dressing room waiting for the red carpet show she and her daughter, Melissa share each year. We learn that Melissa has gotten the A-rated dressing room, ostensibly because she is young, and show business is obsessed with youth. This contrivance goes on a bit long, because, truth be known, most of us are waiting for Rivers' caustic wit to be engaged in what she does best--dishing the dirt on the entertainment industry.
This go-around she adds several characters to the rapid-fire diatribe that characterizes her comedy. The first is a junoesque, Russian makeup person, Svetlana (Yosefa Forma), who wants to be in show business herself. Rivers employs some wisecracking here, calling her Chicken Kiev or any number of other Russian words that pops into her mind. Added, too, is a gay producer, Kenny (Adam Kulbersh), who has been assigned in place of her usual guy now diverted to Melissa. The third is an attractive, smarmy young executive (Tara Joyce) who comes to her dressing room and gives her the ax. Well-intentioned add-ins, they are no match for the power-packed Joan.
Her show is nearly two, intermissionless hours. From her first, blue-tinged harangue at the size of her B-rated dressing room (courtesy of set designer Tom Buderwitz, who makes it look pretty good) to complaints about this ignominy and so many others along her checkered career, we are seeing the iron-will that has kept her going for 74 years.
Her best moments are when she drops the rant and reminisces about how she was a favorite of Johnny Carson's, then ostracized from the Tonight Show forever after she became a late-night competitor with her own show. She also muses about her husband, Edgar Rosenberg, who killed himself when he was bypassed by other producers and lost his will to live. That well-publicized event and her brief estrangement from her daughter gives her a moment to show her vulnerable side. But, then, it's back to the trooper who hawks jewelry and appears at just about any place who will give her a venue.
As a theatrical piece, it probably rates a C-plus; as a comedy act it gets ratcheted up a notch. During moments when she talks about old-age sex or ponders the effects of gravity ("I can get a mammogram and a pedicure at the same time"), she brings down the house.
It's hard to think of many comediennes her age who have endured as well as she. And, in a pinch, she probably is a pretty good grandma to Melissa's four-year-old, whom she seems to adore.
How much input can be attributed to director Bart DeLorenzo and how much to Rivers' own sense of theater is anyone's guess. The program credits Douglas Bernstein and Denis Markell as collaborators with Rivers on the book for the show. It could use some major tweaking, but still, on balance, it's a pretty good evenings' entertainment.
Presented at the Geffen Playhouse, 10886 Le Conte, Los Angeles (Westwood). 310-208-5454.
Tues-Thurs at 7:30; Fri at 8; Sat at 2 & 8; Sun at 3 & 7. Closes March 30. $35-75. No performances Feb 27-March 1
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