A little under a month ago, a controversial tweet about Donald Trump’s 10-year-old son, Barron, got “Saturday Night Live” writer (and former Chicagoan) Katie Rich suspended from the show indefinitely.
Well, anyone who thought Rich’s tweet was in poor taste should be glad they missed comedian Kathy Griffin’s two sold-out, high-energy, stream-of-consciousness sets at the North Shore Center for the Performing Arts on Saturday night, where her subjects included the entire Trump family (including a few unprintable remarks about Barron), her love of the elderly (everyone over 80 is a member of the Illuminati, she avows) and her usual insights into Hollywood culture.
Griffin is a firecracker best known for her reality series “My Life on the D-List” and has certainly never shied away from controversy—in fact, it’s one of the cornerstones of her brand of tell-all comedy.
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The Grammy- and Emmy-winning comedian’s current “Celebrity Run-In Tour" may be centered on celebrity gossip (and launched in support of her recent book, “Kathy Griffin’s Celebrity Run-Ins: My A-Z Index”), but the Trump administration has Griffin feeling much more political.
“I will not be holding back in this political environment,” she declared in the first few minutes of her two-hour 6 p.m. set. “I’ve decided to become worse,” she vowed, to applause, tacking on an additional laugh line for good measure: “Because I’m a lady.”
Dressed all in black with her signature red locks framing her expressions of bewilderment and mischief, Griffin bemoaned that “political correctness” has become something that conservatives now bemoan. “I’m going to be old-fashioned politically incorrect,” she declared.
And while Griffin certainly made good on that promise, she also made good on the promise implicit in any Kathy Griffin show (especially one with “Celebrity” in the title): there will be celebrity talk, it will be told breathlessly, and it will be much more silly than scandalous.
Griffin is like a live-action version of Us Weekly’s “Stars—They’re Just Like Us” section. But rather than exploring how celebrities shop, eat and run like us normal folk, she reports on how they have their own unique quirks and failings (hey, just like us).
From living next door to the Kardashian-Wests (she witnessed Kim Kardashian misspell her own name) to Sharon Stone meeting her mother at a Christmas party (her mother feigned ignorance of Stone and had her list out all her film credits) to Don Rickles and Sidney Poitier describing their morning routines (Vicodin and a fruit plate), Griffin constantly plays the audience’s wide-eyed stand-in, wondering how she ended up in these situations with these famous people, while mining every beat of their interactions for comedic material.
“Let me see how much time we have,” she said at one point, looking at her watch. “I’m not at all offended by walkouts or bathroom breaks, but I don’t want to leave out one detail.” She doesn’t.
Two hours is a long time for any live comedy show, particularly one without an opener, but somehow Griffin makes it fly by. This is especially notable because she’s not constantly funny. At the core of her act is the incredible gift she has for telling stories (which are different from jokes) and keeping an audience engaged between laugh lines.
During a lengthy Thanksgiving tale, she mentioned—in relation to her boyfriend’s introversion—that she can’t “think of anything easier than public speaking.” Not only did this set showcase her comfort with being on stage, the speed with which she jumped from topic to topic was consistently impressive. In the midst of a story, a comment would frequently lead to a tangent that would lead back to a side note in the original story, before the thread was tied back together seamlessly.
So. A free-associating reality television star who relishes the spotlight and knows how to connect with a crowd (she told the audience how smart they were several times over the course of the evening), Griffin is perhaps not so dissimilar to Donald Trump, a sentiment she would likely loathe.
She even used his own method of attacking people’s looks against him. “His physique, it’s very specific,” she said at one point, leading into a bit about the shape of his body. “He’s an old, ugly man,” she added unapologetically. “That’s what I’m going to say because he’s so vicious towards women.”
The Forest Park native then described his hair using Frank Lloyd Wright’s architectural stylings as a touchpoint. In the end, her lengthy takedown of Trump—which she interrupted several times with other stories—was set up the same way she sets up any celebrity takedown: based on her personal experiences.
“Any comedian can get up here and make fun of Trump! It’s so easy!” Griffin declared. “But I actually know him.”
Griffin’s other great strength? Name-dropping.
Zach Freeman is a freelance writer.
ctc-arts@tribpub.com
Twitter@ZachRunsChicago
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