Published on Jan 2, 2003
Robin Williams is a fucking
genius. Let’s get that out in the open right here and now.
Sure, in his career as an actor, he’s had a few movies which could
best be described as “forgettable”, but at least they paid the
bills and earned Williams time in the school of life – lessons he
showed paid off when he finally won an Academy Award a few years
back.
But maybe I should simplify my opening statement. Let’s try that
one more time: Robin Williams is a fucking
comedic genius. When you boil it all down to the bare bones,
Williams is a standup comic extraordinaire, taking the modern
foibles of life and making us laugh at them, no matter how tragic
they might be.
Live 2002, a two-CD set taken from Williams’s first tour in
16 years, captures that essence well – but it also reminds us that
Williams is a comic who is best experienced in the flesh.
If you saw
Robin Williams Live On Broadway when it aired on HBO, or you
purchased the DVD, you won’t have to worry about hearing the exact
same show on this set. Honestly, I can’t hear anything which came
from the tour-ending show in New York – though I would have liked
to have had that set included on the second disc, which features
local bits from many of Williams’s stops. (More on that later.)
Same material, yes – though there are enough nuances in these
performances which differ from the Broadway performance that will
keep things interesting.
In the wake of the deadly terrorist attacks, Williams could have
played things safe, but he dares to take the bull (or, in this
case, Osama bin Laden, the anthrax scare and the numerous security
crackdowns) by the horns and mocks it. The thing is, he does so
with such skill that the comedy works – and undoubtedly produces
some well-needed laughter.
There are no sacred cows in Williams’s beliefs, whether it’s
attacking the Catholic Church and its recent scandal, mocking the
Scottish accent and their invention of golf, or stating his views
on Viagra and the Olympics. If you’re easily offended – well, let’s
face it, you wouldn’t even be on this
site, much less be interested in listening to nearly two
hours of Williams’s often crude (but wickedly funny) humor.
The second disc is the most interesting, simply because it’s
material that hasn’t been heard elsewhere – that is, unless you
were at those particular performances. From the opening “rap” of
“The Grim Rapper” (in which Williams pointedly takes a look at life
and death, and how they all are interrelated) to the local bits,
Williams sounds completely at ease in his settings – so much so
that you don’t have to be a resident of Milwaukee, Atlanta or
Chicago to understand and appreciate some of the local news that
Williams turns into humor.
Live 2002 is proof positive that you could take Williams off
of the stage, but his heart has always remained in the spotlight.
In the slim hope that Williams himself might be directed towards
this review, I have only one question to ask him:
What the hell took you so long to return to stand-up, Robin?