Standups revel in comedy camaraderie
Veteran comics Lewis Black and Kathleen Madigan share once-in-a-lifetime connection
Don’t you wish you could go on a road trip across the country with your best friend? Standup comedians Lewis Black and Kathleen Madigan are doing exactly that, plus they’re getting paid to do it.
Literally the embodiment of anger in the Pixar movie Inside Out as well as in his standup act, Lewis Black is the scholarly yin to the practical, down-to-earth yang of Kathleen Madigan. Right now, Black’s favourite joke in his act is about how Ben Carson gets away with saying nonsense — Madigan’s favourite is about how millennials would react if Trump actually got coal mining to make a comeback.
“Between the two of us, we’re a comedy buffet. If you don’t hear it from her, you’ll hear it from me,” Black says.
“Yeah, I cover the Midwest Irish-Catholic drunky things, and he covers the smarter stuff and uh, Jewy things,” adds a laughing Madigan, who probably not coincidentally chose to do her last two Netflix specials — Madigan Againand last year’s Bothering Jesus — in Detroit and Milwaukee.
Black, 69, and his aggrieved, pointedly political material are a familiar brand to comedy fans after 20 years of appearances on The Daily Show, stretching back to the Craig Kilborn era.
On the other hand, his friend and genial co-headliner Madigan, 51, is purely known for her standup. The Missouri native gradually amassed her substantial following over the past 25 years, mostly through doing hundreds of gigs with Black that ranged from the Montreal Just For Laughs festival to a USO show in Afghanistan.
That brings us to their current 49th Parallel Tour, which kicked off in Calgary on Sept. 6, takes them to Casino Rama on Friday and finishes in London on Saturday. And after all of these years in comedy clubs and on the road, it’s no surprise that Black and Madigan know each other as well as they know themselves.
“Lew loves to go to restaurants. He does his little reviews.” Madigan teases Black as he chuckles in agree- ment. “Oh, you know what makes him super duper happy? A hotdog cart. When you’re a little starving in New York — boom, there’s always one right there.”
They agree that their favourite hobbies are discussing the news, golf and travelling; they both love Pinot Grigio, dogs, and unsweetened iced tea. They even enjoy playing the same ridiculous games, like deciding what they’d be called if they were gorillas. (You can probably guess which would be Kiki, and which would be Clyde “Magumbo” Noir.)
That synchronization translates to the stage. On the current tour Black does a long set followed by Madigan’s, and at the end of each show, the two of them riff together, about topics requested by fans in the room and around the world thanks to their livestream at livelewis.com.
It might be a once-in-a-lifetime connection — standup comedians are not generally known for sharing the stage so affably — but they’re hardly sentimental about it.
“Without her, oh God — I could breathe easy! I’d just be without the sister that I never wanted!” Black jabs with a cackle.
“Sadness, emptiness, yearning of days gone by!” Madigan melodramatically jokes.
“Well, we wouldn’t have gorilla names, I’ll tell you that.”
“And I wouldn’t have times during the day where I’m 11 years old,” says the elder comic. Madigan concedes,
“There’s only so many comedians you’re gonna click like that with.” Lewis Black and Kathleen Madigan perform Friday at Casino Rama and Saturday in London’s Centennial Hall.