Seeing her entrance in post-marathon foil blanket and trainers, I feared the worst for Joan Rivers. Was this a cynical ploy to win over the natives? When she threw off the blanket to reveal a stained black dress and a crumpled Lewinsky gag, things looked even graver. At this point I noticed a sea of stagefront cue cards and was really worried. Then the trainers came off to reveal deadly stilettos, the gags kicked in and Rivers pulled a dazzling victory from the jaws of defeat.
The sixtysomething doyenne of sulphuric oneliners is not so much a stand-up comic as a force of nature, a human tornado sending sacred cows flying.
Animal rights activists? She waves her sable at them. Her thriving QVC jewellery business? It employs cheap child labour. Katharine Hepburn? I'd rather not repeat the joke, but the rafters shook. Roy "Chubby" Brown eat your heart out.
Rivers revels in overturning feminist thinking. Men want beauty, not brains.
No woman ever got laid for knowing an equation - although she phrases it more earthily. Taboos steadily topple. Anne Frank might have surrendered sooner if she had seen a sexy blond Nazi. A riff about widows of 11 September celebrating compensation payouts pushes the envelope as far as any Manhattanite would dare. The result is a virtuoso display of political incorrectness.
More predictably, she gets mileage out of Hollywood's cosmetic-surgery fixation. As images of pots and black kettles loom, Rivers declares a self-deprecating interest. She has had so much done, "It would have been cheaper to have my DNA changed". For the record, she looks impressive from Row J: elegantly thin, low-cut blouse and one of Rod Stewart's old hairdos perched on a lineless face pulled so tight that if she sneezed it might end up in Row K.
The show is not perfect but it comes close. It could have been tailored better for English consumption. Homemaker Martha Stewart is unknown here, while a remark about LBJ's offspring would be lost even on Americans under 50. At an hour, Broke And Alone In London is brief for a comedy set, but the pace never slackens and nobody feels shortchanged. Rivers may never win a marathon, but for comic dash she leaves her rivals standing.
Joan Rivers - Broke And Alone In London
