June 20/Chicago Theater
The only real difference between Lisa Lampanelli's most recent HBO stand-up special Long Live the Queen and her June 20 performance at the Chicago Theater is that she had a different set of audience members to make fun of. Headlining two massive shows as part of the 2009 Just for Laughs Chicago Festival, Lampanelli was her same crass, nasty self -- but that's part of the problem. I've seen her do this same show before, and her insult comedy act has grown kind of familiar.
At the 9:30 show I attended (the second of two shows Lampanelli performed that night), the "Queen of Mean" wasted no time before laying into her audience, making fun of their races and sexual orientation. It's what everyone has come to expect from the insult comic -- for most of the audience members, it's why they were there. I'll give Lampanelli this: she's either incredibly fast on her feet in attacking people or she has such a fountain of material on reserve that she was able to quickly access when appropriate, making it feel spontaneous and totally organic. Whichever the case, it's the mark of a truly skilled and professional comedian.
It doesn't, however, always make her hysterically funny. Yes, she finds a whole lot of colorful and offensive ways of making fun of people or talking about sex, but at this point it's nothing we haven't already heard. There were times I wanted Lampanelli to be more inventive with her comedy. She's at her funniest when she's able to surprise the audience or take a joke in a way we don't expect; her best joke of the night, about a chimpanzee attack a few months ago, was funny because it took a sharp turn at the punchline -- though, if you know Lampanelli's comedy, you could almost see it coming. Almost.
Lampanelli showed incredible control over the enormous crowd at the Chicago Theater (the biggest venue used during all of the Just for Laughs Chicago Festival) and really knows how to work the audience. She has a delivery approach that I find really funny -- not so much the brassy New Yorker thing she does, but an over-exaggerated, dramatic affectation she adopts from time to time -- but her material was hit-or-miss. I suppose she's kind of trapped at this point; she drew a huge crowd, and they came expecting a very specific kind of comedy show. She delivered just what they wanted. If that left someone like me wanting something more, so be it.
