Last night I went to see Lewis Black at the Gaillard Center in Charleston. Disappointed all around. The show as billed as “The Joke Is On US tour,” and it turned out it was.
The warm-up man before Black was in some ways a copycat. He was also on too long and had only one or two good jokes.
He and Black looked like they were the last two men dressed at the Salvation Army that day and just came off the bus from a job site. I consider this disrespectful to the audience who paid anywhere from $50 to a $100 for a seat. (Gaillard’s website listed lower prices but charged more when I bought.)
Most of Black’s material was thoroughly generic. He could have used it in any city in America. There was none of the biting satire and social critic I (and thousands of others, I am sure) have come to expect from him. I have seen several of his televised shows and bought his DVDs.
Lewis's comments about his parents' age did get a lot of applause. His father, he said, is 100 this year and his mother 99. They live in an assisted living facility in Maryland. In some of the earlier shows I have seen they have been in the audience and were shown on camera.
During one rant about not having guns in church, a man in the audience “booed” and Black spent several minutes hectoring this man on guns, the 2nd amendment, and mental stability. I thought this excessive and certainly, no one who has paid his money to sit in the audience needs to be criticized in this manner
