What I liked
Man, these guys really give it everything they’ve got. And since they are the material, they’re able to really lean in. And they cover a lot of ground – toxic relationships, toxic masculinity, toxic narcissism…did I mention it’s funny as hell? What really stands out for me is their ability to drive a point into your eye and then turn around and pull off the laugh. They do it a couple of times and the better they do it, the scarier they can be with the material. They don’t pull too many punches, running the intellectual / public into the emotional / private and then calling each other out for their bent points of view. Lots of woke jokes. Neither is safe from the other turning on him, a delightful surprise each time it happens. They rap (That’s Not About You should be taught in schools), deliver great monologues, and their interaction with each other and the audience is infectious.
What I didn't like
Oh, and they play with language, the arbitrary assignment of social weight to words, what’s allowed by whom. At one point, to avoid using names of real woman from their lives, they announce they will substitute common nouns to protect those woman. They then proceed to confess and apologize for horribly common instances of mistreatment of other and self from past relationships. But as the piece grinds on, and gets harder to hear, the depersonalization of the woman continues to underscore an absurd element that was there from the beginning. You were laughing at it a minute ago but somehow the balance of heartbreakingly awful and funny was disrupted. It felt very much like the slow revelations we go through in relationships, maybe? I don’t know.
(I’m not a Phd. What do I know?)
Great show.
My overall impression
Smiling through the misery, suffering through the joy.
