Tulsa World Entertainment Review of "As Long As We Both Shall Laugh"
By John Wooley, Tulsa World Entertainment Writer
Saturday, March 23, 2002
Reprinted by permission of the Tulsa World
What A Comedian!
Yakov Smirnoff's stand-up routine, alternately funny, touching.
There must come a time in every successful comedian's life when he or she wants to do more than simply make people laugh, as therapeutic and helpful as that may be. This can be a dangerous time for a career, simply because it's so easy to slip from being really funny into being really serious, which isn't nearly as entertaining.
Most of the truly memorable comics, if they choose to expand beyond one-liners and funny stories, intuitively find an ability to dance along the razor's edge between comedy and lecture, between tugging at the sides of the mouth and tugging at the heart. And that's exactly the case with the show famed Russian comedian Yakov Smirnoff premiered at Tulsa's Kathleen P. Westby Playhouse Thursday night.
There was, however, an anxious moment or two at the beginning for those who might be wondering just how different this show was going to be from the things they've seen him do at his Branson, Mo., theater, or on television. As a spotlight came up slowly, showing him seated on a stool on a bare, black-draped stage, he soberly told the audience a few words about his divorce and how he'd felt like a failure because of it, adding that this new show came about because of his explorations into how it happened.
There was a bit of audience laughter during this part, but it sounded slightly nervous, and probably more than one member was thinking something along the lines of the famous David O. Selznick quote about deep meaning vs. entertainment in the movies: "If you want to send a message, call Western Union."
But while there certainly were some messages in the subsequent 90 minutes, along with a substantial amount of pathos and sentiment and a dash of positive didacticism, Smirnoff made every moment work as entertainment.
It was a funny and rewarding show, taking the audience from his childhood in Russia to his work as a Soviet cruise-ship comic (playing what he termed "The Love Barge"), to his early days in America, capped by his being sworn in as a citizen in the shadow of the Statue of Liberty.
That was followed by his observations on dating and men and women, which included the rather remarkable revelation of his being coached on relationships by foulmouthed comic Andrew Dice Clay, who was once his roommate.
The show was divided into two parts, with the first a kind of greatest-hits roundup of his best material, punctuated by Smirnoff taglines "What a country!" and "I bet you never thought of it that way." Crowd members who'd seen his highly successful Branson show over the years probably had heard many of these lines and tales, but they still seemed fresh and funny and brought lots of sizable laughs.
After an intermission, Smirnoff returned with a bucket of popcorn from the Westby Playhouse concession stand, which he passed into the audience as he launched into some new material - still observational, but concentrating on the differences between men and women.
The segment about his unraveling marriage and his counselor's advice, rather than being downbeat, contained some of the funniest stories of the whole night. This half of the show also found him using some rudimentary props, including magnets and a battery-light hookup, leading to a finale that was as sweet as it was unexpected.
The show called "As Long As We Both Shall Laugh", is Broadway bound, and Smirnoff's undoubtedly using performances like these in Tulsa as a kind of shakedown cruise. Certainly, there'll be some tightening and tweaking here and there before he opens in New York. But if he's headed in a new direction with his work, he's surely taking the right road.
By John Wooley
Tulsa World Entertainment Writer
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