Maniscalco explores angst of vanishing roles Comedy review
Sebastian Maniscalco is as much showman as he is comedian. The 45-year-old, Chicagoborn comic performs with such an exaggerated physicality, using face, body and limbs, that the acting-out of his jokes and stories is at times more important, and funnier, than the material. He’s immensely entertaining to watch, which, combined with his largely apolitical stance and only briefly foul-mouthed delivery, has sent his popularity soaring in recent years.
On Saturday night, during the first of two sold-out shows at the Palace Theatre, Maniscalco became a recalcitrant alpaca, for which Maniscalco had to get a city permit to appear at a birthday party, as well as a grandfather with one leg shorter than the other, an arthritic grandmother, his pants-hitching father, his wife and their 16-month-old daughter, whose first steps Maniscalco demonstrates as looking like those of an unsteady chimpanzee.
He animates his act with sufficient ornamentation that it’s impressive in the manner of the showy elaborations with which Liberace adored familiar melodies. Similarly familiar are Maniscalco’s themes. More than any bigger-name comedian I can think of, Maniscalco is a manifestation of the insecurities of middle-aged straight white men at a time of change and uncertainty. Maniscalco, who has been a touring comic for a dozen years, has won a following that makes him wealthy; the estimated box-office gross for Saturday’s Sebastian Maniscalco with Joe Matarese
When: 7 p.m. Saturday
Where: Palace Theatre, 19 Clinton Ave., Albany
■ Length: Maniscalco, 80 minutes; Matarese, 20 minutes
■ The crowd: Sold out, as was 9:30 p.m. show, for an evening total of more than 5,500
shows was about $300,000, the majority of which goes to the him. But his material reflects the general anxiety of someone who isn’t sure where he fits in the world anymore.
The son of immigrants, he felt an outsider in school, and now, decades later, flush with success, he’s still a bumbler, embarrassed to ask for an alpaca permit at City Hall, helpless in the delivery room and at the body shop, and dominated by his wife’s niceness into tamping down his Italian volubility and temper. He’s further emasculated when the couple rents a Waverunner and she insists on piloting. Maniscalco’s depiction of the outing, with him slumping ever lower behind his wife as his body complains about the bumpy ride, is both funny and pity-inducing.
Still, Maniscalco is a careful analyst of the dynamics of relationships, and he repeatedly won laughter and applause from the crowd with observations about the benefits and disadvantages of having spousal arguments in the car, the trying business of learning to compromise with your significant other, and the signature elements of Italian-american families. He’s strongest with this last area, which informs all of his act as well as his entire aesthetic. Even as Maniscalco celebrates his heritage, he’s implicitly mourning the societal changes that are rendering it a smaller part of the cultural whole.
Joe Matarese, a 50-year-old comedian from New Jersey who also has Italian roots, opened with 20 mild minutes, ending with the only use of the guitar that been slung over his back for the entire act. In between short lead-guitar noodles, Matarese spoke the lyrics to a faux blues song about being successful and thus unable to write the blues. It wasn’t as funny as it sounds.