by James Judd
“We’re all trying to figure out how to be relevant to someone or something,” says Lisa Lampanelli on the topic of her new one-woman show Lisa Lampanelli: Irrelevant! She will be performing it here in a one-night-only benefit for The Provincetown Theater on August 31. The comedy superstar, once widely and affectionately exalted as The Queen of Mean for her flabbergasting ability to decimate an audience with insults, was at her home in Connecticut, where for the few seconds she was visible on Zoom she appeared chic and happy. Technical snafus threatened to derail the interview, but Lampanelli refused to give up. With the vigor of a wartime radio operator, she rigged up some sort of telephone recording system that saved the day.
Although she retired from stand-up in 2018, she’s been busy. Exactly how she’s spent that time is the basis of her new show, so no spoilers will appear here. Suffice to say she’s taken her personal drama and done with it what great comics have always done—turned it into material.
“I’m doing this to raise money for the theater, not my ego,” says Lampanelli, who is generously donating the entirety of the ticket proceeds to The Provincetown Theater. Even more exciting is the chance to see into the process of creation by one of the greatest live performers in comedy history. This isn’t your coworker reading their pandemic-era poetry at a Pizza and Poetry Night (although that sounds lovely, and we should support that). This is Lisa motherf–king Lampanelli. This is a woman who sold out Radio City Music Hall and Carnegie Hall performing just for us in our own 99-seat black box theater on Bradford Street.
“When the first draft was ready, I’d do it for 15 people that are smart and get it—directors, actors, storytellers,” says Lampanelli. “I did five or six of those and then I did it for the head of the Actor’s Studio. Now it’s ready to do in front of a paid audience as a fundraiser. I know it’s entertaining. I know everyone who sees it is very moved. It’s very emotional. It’s more dramatic than funny, even though there’s humor in it, but it’s not leading with funny. I can’t help but have jokes come in when they’re necessary.’
But Lampanelli expresses some nervousness about how this intimate workshop performance will be perceived by a Provincetown audience. “This is a reading,” she says. “I’m pretty off-book because I’m a pro but it’s a workshop with a talk back.” An intimate insight into artistic creation with a brilliant performer ought to be catnip for our audiences, many of whom are artists themselves or are also pursuing second or third careers.
“Every show has a call to action and mine is stop trying so hard,” she explains. “If I can have five people leave the theater feeling like, ‘I have to stop killing myself with trying so hard. I can really just be,’ then oh my god, what better work do I have to put out there?”
Lampanelli, once a frequent guest on The Howard Stern Show—an honor and career benchmark coveted by every comic in show business—notes his willingness to fearlessly put the truth of himself in front of his audience as an influence in her own work.
“There’s so much fulfillment in putting out who you really are,” she says. “I’m showing more of who I am than ever before.”
She’s also embraced the shift from confrontational performing to a more overtly empathetic style of storytelling “Back when I was doing stand-up, I needed a laugh every six seconds. It was like an addiction, like I would have died without it. I never gave people a chance to breathe,” she says. “Now I like the feeling that someone (in the audience) is moved by it. Silence is awesome. Storytelling isn’t therapy, but it is therapeutic.”
Does Lampanelli miss the days when she was a huge star with handlers and sycophants catering to her every whim? Lampanelli insists those kinds of star-trappings were never a part of her style.
“I’d drive up to the gig at five minutes to showtime but never late,” she says, laughing at her audacity. “Someone would say, ‘Aren’t we supposed to have a show?’ And I’d say, ‘I am the show, motherf–ker,’ and then waltz onto the stage. My blessing and my curse is that I make everything look easy. And then I’d do the show and waltz right back out.”
She says, “The one thing I miss from that life is being able to eat large volumes of food.” She underwent bariatric surgery in 2012 and lost over 100 pounds. “I will never be able to do that again. There’s a kind of grief that comes up from that because that’s not me anymore.”
Finally, asked about her time on Celebrity Apprentice, and her interactions with our former president, she just says, “There was not even a glimmer of his desire to be president. He was just some douche bag with a show. But I like to joke that I raised $130,000 for Gay Men’s Health Crisis. And after I took my 70% cut, I did a lot of good with it.”
Lisa Lampanelli performs in Irrelevant! a workshop, script-in-hand one-night-only event with all ticket proceeds being donated to the Provincetown Theater, at the Provincetown Theater, 238 Bradford St., Saturday, August 31, 7 p.m. An audience talk-back will follow the performance. For tickets (all seats:$55 General Admission) and information go to the box office, call 508.487.7487 or visit provincetowntheater.org.
