×

Madigan gets big laughs at Packard event

WARREN — Comedian Kathleen Madigan did an extended bit during her show Friday at Packard Music Hall about the number of octogenarian politicians in the U.S.

She zinged re-elected 89-year-old Iowa Sen. Chuck Grassley along with 82-year-old Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi and the 80-year-old Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, and she suggested the staff of President Joe Biden, a relative youngster at 79, should zing tennis balls — not at him but in his line of sight — to get him back on track when he wanders off the teleprompter and starts telling one of his meandering stories.

One thing was clear during the 57-year-old Madigan’s hour-long set — she still is clearly in her prime.

The Irish-American comedian, who had green lights accentuating the curtain behind her and took the stage to the Irish-influenced punk of the Dropkick Murphys, had the audience laughing loudly and consistently throughout her set.

Like her good friend Lewis Black, who played Packard in September, her political material gravitated toward the “Can’t we all agree on this …” vein instead of being divisive, and in many cases the political was used to set up the personal, which always has been the essence of her act.

The lines about aging politicians led to her asking her 80-something father whether he was fit to be president. His response was only if he and Madigan’s mother could do it as a team, because there are days he can’t remember anything and she’s on the ball, and other days where she can’t remember where the car is and he’s right on it.

References to her parents and her siblings were woven throughout her set, along with plenty of generational humor. She told younger audience members, those boomerang kids who returned home after college, that if they hang around long enough, their parents eventually will appreciate them being there.

“Can you drive at night?” Madigan said, impersonating their aging parents.

She also talked about millennials’ comfort in quitting any job they don’t like, saying it’s like they all joined a union without taking a vote and the union motto is, “Yeah … No.”

That led to the foolishness of the former President going into coal country and telling supporters he was going to reopen all the coal mines so those young people would have a place to work and stay in their communities.

“I’ve met a lot of millennials, and I’ve never met one who wanted to be a coal miner,” Madigan said. “They won’t work at The Gap.”

Madigan finds a way to give topical stories a personal spin and universal experiences an absurdist twist.

Sympathizing with Kanye West fans trying to reconcile their fandom with his anti-semitic comments, Madigan imagined her own dilemma if she had bought tickets to see Stevie Nicks and then stories broke that the singer “ate a baby.” She doesn’t want to support that kind of behavior, “But I really want to hear ‘Landslide’.”

And a story about the tried-and-true topic of hating car shopping detours into her imagining different scenarios if she was to hit a Bigfoot while driving to a series of gigs in Oregon.

About the only complaint with Madigan’s set is that it ended like she was in a debate tournament and would get penalized if she went over her allotted time.

Her set didn’t build to a crescendo as much as, “Well, I’ve hit an hour, gotta go.”

She may be an older Gen Xer, but she can quit like a millennial.

NEWSLETTER

Today's breaking news and more in your inbox

I'm interested in (please check all that apply)
Are you a paying subscriber to the newspaper? *
   

Starting at $2.99/week.

Subscribe Today