Comedienne Paula Poundstone back in sardonic form
Three years ago Poundstone got the kind of media attention you couldn't buy — for your worst enemy.
It was widely reported when the comedienne, a single mother of three adopted children, was arrested in 2001 while driving drunk.
She was initially charged with felony child endangerment and a misdemeanor count of inflicting injury on a child, and allegedly committing lewd behavior with a girl under age 14.
The explosive latter charge was dropped. And after pleading no-contest on other counts, Poundstone was sentenced to 180 days at a drug- and alcohol-rehab center, and temporarily lost custody of her adopted kids.
In another time, such a scandal would crush a comedy career. But the public is more forgiving now.
And Poundstone has demonstrated her resiliency by continuing to work, and by admitting publicly she "made mistakes."
In her sold-out Saturday night show at ACT Theatre, Poundstone cut her usual androgynous figure in a floppy black pin-striped suit and bright necktie. She stayed caffeinated by sipping Diet Coke, and her spiel was as free-form and sardonic as ever.
She did allude to her legal difficulties and the media madness they spurred ("I have a little drinking problem — I don't know if you've heard?"), and touched on her rehab (an avowed atheist, she's not a fan of Alcoholics Anonymous with its reliance on a "higher power").
But there was no detailing or funneling of her struggles into the kind of harrowing epiphany and hilarious catharsis that, say, comedian Richard Pryor forged from his own troubles.
In fact, Poundstone spent much of her freewheeling, two-hour show quipping about such familiar targets as the Seattle weather and airline travel. And chatting about her favorite holiday TV movie (the Mr. Magoo version of "A Christmas Carol"). And telling fond/wacky stories about the things her three children (now back in her care), many cats and cat-hating dog do. And taking some sharp snipes at President Bush.
When her chatter began to sag, Poundstone returned to her well-honed tactic of singling out patrons for some friendly/hostile interrogation. (When a woman told her she'd moved to Seattle from New Orleans, Poundstone asked incredulously: "What were you thinking?"
On Saturday night, the loose interweaving of comic trivia, family-eccentricity jokes and audience repartee appeared to please Poundstone's fans mightily. And it anchored the show firmly in the comedy club rather than the confessional.
Yet there's a dark streak in Poundstone's humor, a fatalism you don't hear in such comic peers as Ellen DeGeneres. For instance, she'll toss off a suicide joke, about the futility of trying to asphyxiate herself with carbon monoxide in a very large parking garage.
Or inform you sternly that a near-death experience taught her "there's no bright light, and there's nobody waving you anywhere" at the end of life — so live now, folks; it's all you got.
Poundstone mines morbidity for quick laughs but then pulls back. Maybe her hopscotching despair and breeziness, trivia and gloom are symptomatic of our unsettled age. Maybe it's a (refreshing) reticence to spill to strangers. In any case, it's what Paula Poundstone is willing to share.
Misha Berson: mberson@seattletimes.com
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