Diarrhea, severe internal bleeding, a cat accidentally strangled to death, a great-aunt dying alone and reduced to a pile of bones and a wig beside her tennis-ball-cushioned walker … it doesn’t sound like the makings of a funny night of standup. But Tig Notaro and her uniquely measured delivery make for a calm guide through even the darkest territory.
The Grammy-nominated comic attracted a big crowd to the Academy of Music in Northampton last Sunday. Fifteen minutes before showtime I ran across the street in the rain to became part of the river of people flowing into the theater’s front doors; the lobby inside was full of smiles and people scurrying to their seats. The excitement in the air for Notaro’s set was a palpable thing.
The super-supportive audience laughed heartily at her jokes and asides but also reacted with many an “awww” — as in “so cute,” like when Notaro recounted her conversation of meows with her cat Fluff, or “so sad,” as she began to describe a visit to a friend’s lonely great-aunt.
“You guys are sensitive,” she said, joking with the crowd. “The story’s going to get way worse.”
I can only speak for myself, but part of the reason for the close bond between Notaro and her fans is possibly because in the past, she’s turned highly personal experiences — including a string of devastating events that’s the very definition of things getting “way worse” — into unforgettable comedy. Specifically a 2012 set recorded at the Los Angeles club Largo that became her Grammy-nominated album “Live.” (If you haven’t heard that powerful half-hour, hyped by Louis CK and others at the time and ever since, for good reason, buy it and listen to it right now.)
Many happier events have happened since that heaviness — her marriage to Stephanie Allynne last October with twins on the way, a documentary, an HBO special, a TV series, a book coming out in June — and Notaro remains a hard-working standup comic. At the Academy she did bits both in-progress (dealing with customs on the way home from her honeymoon) and tried-and-true (her “impression of a person doing impressions”).
She told the story of the hell she went through when she had all four wisdom teeth surgically removed, having to deal with the painful and bloody aftermath alone when her self-employed and self-involved girlfriend-at-the-time refused to give her a helpful ride home. After getting into a minor fender bender while driving herself away from the operation in a drugged haze — only to get home and realize she forgot to pick up her all-important pain medication — she attempted to get the attention of her downstairs neighbor Leslie.
Notaro got laughs with her impression of the muddled state she was in that afternoon, standing outside her house, repeatedly crying “Leslie!” with a pain-paralyzed mouth and gauze-muffled voice, trying to weakly lob rocks at her friend’s window.
The definite highlight of the Academy show came near the end of the night when Notaro said she wanted to welcome a special guest. She took her wireless microphone, left the stage to walk halfway up the aisle into the audience, then turned around to announce the surprise — the Indigo Girls.
Who, of course, did not materialize.
Applause and guffaws did, though — you could sense the smiles in the air as Notaro stepped back onstage to have a clarifying conversation with the supposed guests hidden from view off to the side.
It set off a long routine of toying with the crowd, dangling the idea that the Indigo Girls (who truly are playing a sold-out show at the Academy at the end of this month) just happened to be in the house, waiting in the wings.
“You think my whole hour was just a warm up for the Indigo Girls?” Notaro asked with mock irritation, the audience cracking up, then she lit up her face to add happily, “Well you’re right. Here they are, the Indigo Girls!” and walked off briskly, leaving an empty stage and a theater full of cheers and giggling. Eventually Notaro reappeared, slinking back toward the microphone, setting off another wave of giggles.
She kept it up for a while, always finding a new way to get a big laugh out of once again announcing the folk duo to the stage. The whole hall was humming with an infectious loopy energy, which got wilder with Notaro’s every expert jerk of the steering wheel. It was a fun ride.
Ken Maiuri can be reached at clublandcolumn@gmail.com.