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Ali Wong lamented the plight of men in the noisy first performance of his new show at the Beacon Theater on Tuesday, comparing oral sex to a pepper grinder and advising women to do something while talking dirty. “The lies,” he says, alluding to a preacher’s voice, “will set you free.”
Critics often focus on the part of stand-up comedy that is anything but funny. Wong’s Special “Baby Cobra” debuting in 2016 celebrated for his argument that mothers are judged much harsher than fathers, but The sex jokes were also very good. You can always hear some variations on the power of having sex with a white man on stand-up sets now (“I feel like I’ve absorbed all these privileges and entitlements”). His new show also resets the funniest yet sexist double standards, but the best comic book sets dig into the abysmal fun of lust.
Sex is the biggest stand-up topic, stubbornly taboo, forever funny. Also the most common is the meat and potatoes of comedy. This puts a premium on creativity and craft. And in his filthy new work, Wong deftly drives the crowd wild, displaying a truly refined vulgarity. No mask can drown out the sound of dirty killing jokes.
This show is the first of eight shows at Beacon as part of it. “The Milk and Money Tour” represents a new (and highly obscure) era in New York stand-up. While clubs like City Winery and even larger rooms offer stand-up comedy, Wong’s is the first of the major theatrical performances to come to the city since the pandemic began.
At Madison Square Garden, Dave Chappelle, Bill Burr, Wanda Sykes, John Mulaney and many other stars will perform on the same bill for 9/11 charities. Louis CK is performing at the smaller theater at MSG this week. Jim Gaffigan and Gabriel Iglesias arrive at Radio City Music Hall. Chelsea Handler, Jim Jeffries, Joe Rogan, and Chris Tucker are just a few of the other comics that will be playing to thousands of fans before the end of October.
Most of these shows were part of tours announced when the pandemic news was more optimistic, but with the rise of the Delta variant, the mood has changed. Gone are the weeks when the vaccinated crowd was unmasked. A new anxiety sits side by side with the suppressed excitement of being in the crowd again. This creates a charged, high-risk, and rewarding atmosphere for comedy that depends on two reliable steps of creating suspense and releasing it.
Wong’s most notable choice was not to mention the pandemic altogether. Since the subject has already dominated our lives, I was grateful for one, though the risk of ignoring an elephant roaming around the room. The night I attended he helped save no time by showing the animal in a tense opening scene that serves as the perfect teaser for Jim Gaffigan’s next special. After thanking the audience for their applause, he stated that they would all die within a week. “Just kidding,” he added, before clarifying, more like a month.
It was a surprising opening, but the loud response to this dark joke shows that it voiced (and neutralized) a thought that filled the room. Then again, the only stand-up theme that gives sex some competition is death.
Like Gaffigan, Wong has some issues, but his real signature at this stage of his career is the rhythm of his delivery. There is a staccato music in his comedy. The bass line is impulsive, urgent sentences that build momentum and volume until they burst with hard consonants. He’s gotten more creative in recent years, mingling with a whisper, leaning back against repetition and staying in long pauses. Most of his biggest laughs come from holding the silence with an extra kick.
When Wong finds a piece that works like a row of painful fist lines expressing the jealousy of single people, he knows how to milk it, but it doesn’t take long. His comedy doesn’t go around or riff very much, and when it does, it has a purpose. when the non-smiling uttered the following sentence: “There is no such word as a male mistress in our society.”
This illustrates the argument that men have a greater tolerance for being unfaithful than women, which is a bittersweet subject for her because, as she has repeatedly insisted, cheating is always on her mind. This is a show about a married woman’s frustrated sex drive from the perspective of someone who met her husband a few years before she became rich and famous. Men get bad and get out of it, he explains, convincingly displaying his resentment. Why can’t he?
Wong’s comedy often makes fun of other comedies. Just as it brings to mind Louis CK, who has never mentioned it before but makes fun of his children, this new watch is Exclusive items from Chris Rock (a clear influence on his work) and Kevin Hart, referring to their infidelity. A star’s inability to capitalize on her newfound influence may not be as relatable as the frustration of watching men get compliments for changing diapers, but it’s the challenge of monogamy.
What matters to Wong is this: the more angry he gets, the funnier he gets. There’s something hysterical in the disgust in her voice when she says that the type of women men want to date is “peaceful”. Not only does Wong find zero appeal in this – he seems surprised by this. He uses the metaphors of prison or the stock market when discussing relationships. (Husband bought it cheap and would sell high if they divorced.)
Predictably, her show eventually softens and turns into a love letter to her husband, a part of which the function of the set is not to make you laugh but to keep you on her side. Wong made a similar move at the end of “Baby Cobra,” adding that while she was trying to trap her husband, she did it to her and eventually paid off her college loans.
But the sex jokes here are not actually about cheating, but about thinking about cheating. Sharing the intricate details of a benign encounter with a young food consultant on the set of a movie he’s writing, Wong finds comedy in fantasy, the glorious sins of the imagination. It’s the kind of escape that comedy can uniquely provide. Judging by the exhilaration of some of the laughter he received, it looked like the crowd needed it. Maybe sex jokes are healing, at least for a short time.
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