Joan Rivers is in her decrepit dressing room waiting the 90 minutes to go onto the red carpet for a fictional cable TV network. Her daughter, Melissa, has the A dressing room. It's a not very good sign, along with the incredibly small cheese plate featuring "Laughing Cow", that her star is again on the wane. Again. She has had to come back from celebrity, financial, and personal oblivion before, and it looks like she just maybe will have to start over once more. She alternately rants to her ne'er do well underlings. She comedically rants to us, her loyal audience, about age, and gravity. And she stops for a moment or two in small spotlight to reflect with gravitas about people she has known and losses she has suffered. I wouldn't have thought it possible for the mix to work. But mostly, it did.
The plastic surgery is overdone. Even she'd admit it. But that is the thing about a "Work in Progress by a Life In Progress", she keeps on tinkering, and you find yourself rooting for her, even with both tears of laughter and sadness.
Surprisingly it's not the jokes I remember from the evening at the Geffen, it's the stories that she told with all seriousness after leaving us reeling with laughter at the ravages of aging in Hollywood, or aging anywhere for that matter. The one about cinemetographer Lucien Ballard. The one about the suicide of her husband Edgar Rosenberg, after he was banned, perhaps even with some reason, from the set at FOX when Joan had her ill-fated, short lived talk show. And the one about Johnny Carson, who, called by Joan to share the good news of her becoming a host on the then new network, hung up on her, never to talk to her again. Even after Edgar died. Even after his own son, Rick, died, and she sent a note of condolence. And yet, she still reveres him.
My friend, Len (Speaks), and I agreed that she could have carried off the evening without the supporting cast whose job it was to advance the story and be a kind of stage sounding board. She really did not need them. It's too bad she doesn't realize that. And as to the plastic surgery, some things you can't hold back. Age. Death. Loss. But you can hold back fear. And laughter does that! Depth and laughter, both in one evening. Who knew?
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