Joan Rivers - Work in Progress - Review
Comedy Diva thrills Her British Fans in London Theatre Debut
Oct 8, 2008
Joan Rivers bounces onto the stage, her famous face stretched like an elastic band, a parody of the victims of all plastic surgery junkies. Yet within a few seconds her mesmeric power takes hold and you are with her. Although it seems that every word is uttered adlib, the A Work in Progress is indeed scripted by Douglas Bernstein and Denis Markell.
The frame is a set-up in a dressing room where a ditzy makeup girl and a shabby assistant are preparing Rivers for a TV interview. Rivers all the while delivers a dazzling diatribe of merciless wit, targeting those in show business who have given her fodder.
Joan Rivers Satirizes Celebrities
Mel Gibson, Victoria Beckham and even Judy Dench, whom she archly calls Sir Dame Judy Dench, are amongst the many who come under the scalpel. Never let it be said that she is afraid. Nor indeed does she forgive those who have crossed her. TV executives and chat-show hosts are verbally pinioned, and in her humour we share her outrage. Sometimes she uses a gentler, more Cold-War verbal tactic: "She and her child have a wonderful relationship, almost like mother and daughter."
She resumes her intimacy with her audience as if she were talking to a close friend, and it is this very magical quality of making the individual her focus that guarantees their sympathy. Throughout the performance, women verbally empathise as she talks.
Comedy to Tragedy
There are moments that are balanced precariously on the edge of an intimacy that is so sad that when she talks of her husband's suicide the switch to tragedy is quite shocking. Her humiliation at having to ask her then-16-year-old daughter for money; her husband left her nothing in his will. The sadness of Mae West's funeral when only a handful of people came to pay their last respects to the Hollywood Icon. Her humiliation at being fired by Johnny Carson when she was in her 50s, and how she didn't work for two years. And then seamlessly she shifts gears again and we're back to postmenopausal and Viagra jokes.
It is a tribute to this extraordinary performer that for all her brashness she has a vulnerability and honesty that she does not hide. "I can't lie to you," she says. "I don't want my nose to grow back."
A Work in Progress returns to the New Leicester Square Theatre London December 2 to January 29th for a pre Broadway run.
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