Reviews

Margaret Cho – Cho Dependent

“She’s filthy, you’ll love her,” someone said to me on my way in to see the 42 year-old Korean American stand-up. He got it half right. She’s like a potty-mouthed Joan Rivers who prefers her women butch and rolling their own tampons.

This kind of material is often called “taboo-busting” but the trouble with Cho is that it doesn’t seem to cost her anything, like it did, say, Lenny Bruce. And there’s no great comic technique; she rambles for 45 minutes, checks with her technicians, rambles for ten more, then stops.

It’s a one-sided conversation with rude bits. And the odd funny line: she convincingly defends civil partnerships by saying it would be inhumane to deny a gay man his rights to a bridal registry. And there’s a good passage about fag-haggery, though other passages are dark and hairy, and of course she goes right down (or up) them.

Cho says she played gay bars here ten years ago but you get the impression now she’s just stopping off between bigger gigs and television shows back home. Cho’s brand of smut is prime time nowadays, and no-one’s shocked to be told that male genitalia are easy to handle, like a faucet, whereas you still need a PIN number for ladies.