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HBO Presents Ellen DeGeneres, Stand-Up ComicBy Jack Nichols
Returning to stand-up, which she calls her roots, and taped in front of a immense audience assembled at Manhattan’s Beacon Theatre, Ms. DeGeneres was clearly the beloved object of the vast throng’s impassioned outpourings of affection. Relaxed and on top of her act, she delivered a spirited one-hour monologue about a wide variety of topics, offering as a starter to provide her huge audience with an interpretive dance—as opposed to an oral discussion-- in order to explain the circumstances of her life after coming out three years ago. The dance begins in a comedic fashion with the spotlights of notoriety trained on an acclaimed Ellen who seems eager to live in tune with her new OUT universe. The comic demonstrates her easy-going comfort while in thrall to energetic musical rhythms. There are tempestuous moments and seemingly combative ones too in which she swings and swats at gnats of negativity. For a moment she draws her feet to her chest and covers her face, hiding herself from life. But thereafter, suddenly, she peeks out from the depths of denial and her eyes become full of a bright and childlike wonder. She’s ready to return to the world as it is. It’s clear that she sees beyond the darkness and now believes in those promises that are being fashioned by hope. In one routine she muses matter-of-factly on the cruel fates of small creatures, including spiders, pretending to be a common house fly and then a spider who is commiserating with other spiders on the death of a their fellow insect. "Did you hear about Chris?" she asks a fellow spider, explaining thereafter the cause of Chris’ demise: namely, a tennis shoe. But worse, Chris has left behind a widow spider who now has 900 young spiders to raise all by herself. "She’s got her legs full," Spider Ellen explains. She tells of going to God’s house and awaiting the Deity in a well-lit living room. God enters the room carrying guest-friendly items such as a fondue. She’s a lovely black woman. A conversation with God ensues—one in which the comedian’s warmth and wholesomeness are mixed with her tendency to ask basic questions about life in an irreplaceably oddball way. There are sterling moments in this show in which Ellen DeGeneres seems almost spiritual, her questions about the universe left as mysterious as ever, perhaps, but her deft thinking processes revealing that she is not one to avoid examining life’s absurdities, meeting them in her own down-to-earth shoes and making their discussion palatable to people who would otherwise be unlikely to examine such absurdities by themselves. As credits rolled at the end of the show, members of the audience eagerly stood up and gave testimonials of their affection. One, a young androgynous woman—mistaken by Ellen herself for a man— weeps openly for having been brought out of her alienated existence after having witnessed the coming out process engaged in by the star herself. Ellen beckons the young woman to the stage front, where she reaches out and comforts her with a caring embrace. It was this mutual embrace, perhaps, that epitomizes what The Beginning does best by loosing the spirits of genuine affection and honest inquiry in the land.
READ JACK'S COLUMN FROM LAST WEEK Jack Nichols is Senior Editor at GayToday www.gaytoday.badpuppy.com. Jack Nichols is also the author of Men's Liberation: A New Definition of Masculinity (Penguin); Welcome to Fire Island: Visions of Cherry Grove & the Pines (St. Martin's Press); and is co-author with Lige Clarke of I Have More Fun With You Than Anybody (St. Martin's Press); and Roommates Can't Always Be Lovers: An Intimate Guide to Male/Male Relationships (St. Martin's Press)
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richard e. schiff,
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fter an eight
year absence from the stage, Ellen DeGeneres appeared trim, fit and
happy last Sunday night during the first showing of her HBO production, The
Beginning: A Comedy Special for the Ages.
