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She sells her tickets for the almost quaint reason that she has delivered consistently excellent stand-up for three decades.
She is very good at her job.
Lewis Blacks Cruise, from her 2013 special,Kathleen Madigan: Madigan Again, is proof.
Watch it here now.
Onstage, Madigan presents herself as an incorrigible life-of the-party throw in.
Here she recounts her first cruise, which she shared with longtime friend and fellow elite comic Lewis Black.
Her reverie is soon interrupted by a PA announcement.
It will not match your deck or room, so kindly pay .
Any comic will tell you that this is very difficult to pull off.
At 1:41, we meet some of the eaters and drinkers Madigan describes at the bits outset.
Madigan stops and drinks her water as the audience explodes into an eye-popping 11-second applause break.
Who says alcoholics have no energy?
she says to big laughs at 2:17 in a defense of her shipmates pluck and ingenuity.
But thats where Lewis Blacks Cruise distinguishes itself.
Back on the ship, Madigans in-room TV displays the previous nights bar bill every morning.
Some comics place a particular vice front and center in their work.
Here, Madigan confounds expectations again.
We immediately recognize it when we see it onstage.
Its what elevates the best stand-up from entertaining speeches to works of performance art.
The truth about cruise ships turns out to be what their inexhaustible supply of indulgences reveal about the passenger.
