stevewright.com
Despite routinely being ranked among the greatest standup comedians of all time, Steven Wright seems to have a distinct lack of name recognition nowadays. Nonetheless, his unflappably deadpan persona, which has earned him scene-stealing bit parts in everything from Reservoir Dogs and Natural Born Killers to Half Baked and Louie, along with the dryly absurd, endlessly quotable one-liners (which have circulated the Internet to the point where they’re now outnumbered by fakes), are likely instantly recognizable to many all the same. Put short, he’s “that one guy” to a lot of people, but while that’s a shame, Wright’s also cultivated a certain obscurity, only releasing three specials and two albums since breaking out of Boston’s fertile 1980s comedy scene, making his performance Thursday night something of a rare treat, even if the material was all too familiar.
As the lights went down in Potawatomi’s comfortably intimate Northern Lights Theatre, which feels miles away from the hallucinatory sensory overload just outside its doors, a cheer rose from the sizable crowd, which Wright responded to with his customary unenthused “Thanks” before launching into one of his famously rambling, digression-filled short stories, detailing the bizarre consequences of trying to assassinate his pet parrot for racking up a hefty phone bill. While perhaps not new, that surreal segment and the string of typically left-field observations that followed felt fresh and off the cuff, but maybe a third of the way through his 90-minute set, he switched over to an almost verbatim recreation of his most recent and widely seen special, 2006’s When the Leaves Blow Away, albeit with the jokes in a slightly shuffled order.
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While it’s puzzling and somewhat disheartening to see one of the most inventive stand-ups ever doing an almost decade-old show, recycling past material wasn’t really the problem so much as the fact that he was sticking almost exclusively to such a well-known source when there’s obviously so much more to choose from, especially since many of his carefully worded jokes rely on their unexpectedly oblique or philosophical punchlines. Without that element of surprise, the show lost something, but was hardly a disappointment, since When the Leaves Blow Away is still an impeccably crafted hour of comedy and Wright still delivers it with (downplayed) verve. For those less acquainted with his oeuvre it was surely a riot but, as entertaining as it was, his more attentive fans have heard that one before.