An ongoing debate rages in the comedy world that girls aren’t as joke-minded as boys. That’s like saying Madame Curie can’t mix up some cool isotopes, or that Vanessa Williams can’t whap killer tennis serves, but by now we know, in the laugh-wake of the likes of Tina Fey and Joan Rivers, that women can tickle the funny bone; no more controversy, please.
Last Friday night, with Hurricane Joaquin serving up gothic winds and splats of rain in our faces, a shockingly large crowd nonetheless turned out at tony A Gallery on Uncas Avenue in Oak Bluffs to l.o.l. bigtime at a hand-selected quartet of female comedians.
Owner Tanya Augoustinos, in her fourth year in this cavernous venue with its cement floors and caramel-brown walls, created the perfect backdrop for her live performers: artist Allessandra Petlin’s enormous and gorgeous pigment prints of African American female faces, some with extravagant makeup, others pristine as nuns, one with a cascade of black braids, another with cherry-red lipstick that picked up the topless red corset of another; the total display a fabulous scenery for the live faces at the microphone.
Writer Gwyn McAllister of Oak Bluffs and Harlem read several poems from her blog “Pick Your Poison” (pickyourpoison.net), a showcase of our versatile reporter’s dark side: “It used to be cool to be a meth addict” and “Now the media has mainstreamed all sorts of vices and oddities … even hoarding/ Not that hoarding was ever cool. But it was distinctive.” She summed up, “That’s enough self-hatred, although that’s sort of my niche,.” she amended with a grin of her actual niche, one of pure trickster charm.
Next on deck was the well-known actress and writer Jenny Allen (some of you may have seen her last June in Arnie Reisman’s play “Not Constantinople” at the Vineyard Playhouse). Not to knock your socks off, but her essays have appeared in the New Yorker, the New York Times, Vogue, Esquire, and the Huffington Post. She performed in Spalding Gray’s “Stories Left to Tell,” and received the 2010 “It’s Always Something” award from Gilda’s Club.
At A Gallery she read two of her stories, the first, “Something’s Wrong in the Backyard.” The wrong bit was her car. In the driveway, parked. No more teen girls to chauffeur around, now that at least one of their pals had a license. She itemizes the detritus in the automobile: Nair, razors, mascara and mascara remover, gum — “Always gum!” she laments. In a second essay, “Can I Have Your Errands?” she recounts the discovery of some pampered lady’s to-do list, including “Take in Drop off Lexus.” Also “Buy suspenders,” which Ms. Allen suspects is for a banker husband. “I’ve never understood the message that investment bankers are trying to send with suspenders — ‘I’m the sort of fellow whose pants never fall down, so you can trust me with your money’?”
Judy Belushi stepped in to read Ms. Allen’s last piece, “Canonize Me,” about some odd writing detours: “I turned Young Dystopian Adult fiction into a small animal that was crossing the road, and I ran over it.”
Rounding out the final portion of the cabaret, a big bold flatscreen was rolled out for a viewing of clips from sisters Brooke and Lynne Adams’ mocumentary “All Downhill From Here,” to be streamed in their upcoming webcast. Brooke Adams, of Los Angeles, New York, and Martha’s Vineyard, starred in movies including “Days of Heaven” and “Invasion of the Body Snatchers.” She also paints, and has developed a new fashion line called Arms Control, which she exhibited on her own arms at the event: a sort of long-sleeved evening glove, minus the hand part — a perfect cover-up for the aging lady’s upper arm.
Lynne starred in the soap operas “The Guiding Light” and “The Secret Storm,” and the feature film “Made-Up,” which she wrote, produced and starred in along with sister Brooke and brother-in-law Tony Shalhoub.
The premise of “All Downhill” is two fictional sisters residing up-Island, one of whom — Lynne’s character — hypochondriacally thinks she’s dying. Sister (Brooke) shows up to indulge her: “If this doesn’t cheer her up, I don’t know what will,” and they begin at the airport with some superb slapstick as the healthy sister accidentally chucks the putatively sick sister out of her wheelchair.
After an amusing display from the webcast the Adams sisters will be posting soon, Ms. Brooke treated us to an improvised comedy set, which was duly filmed and will be added to the series, à la comedian Louis C.K. Throughout, Ms. Brooke mused on the cost of things — an accounting to which she admittedly pays little attention, though her sister and husband wish she would — her shopping spanning the globe from Beverly Hills to New York to a brief touchdown in Morocco, where she tries to haggle over a small leather change purse — because she’s been coached that one should — with a “dear sweet Moroccan” shopkeeper. At last, she finds the same handstitched item at our own Midnight Farm gift shop in Vineyard Haven, and it’s cheaper. (Hard to believe, but who can doubt the personally narrated account of a standup comic?)
The evening imparted not only laughter — high-octane laughter — but the festive overlay of the gallery, the glamour of a surprisingly big turnout for so meteorologically fraught a night, replete with a bar and a compelling sense of a good time having been had by all.
Ms. Augoustinos promises a new humor venue in the planning stage, possibly slated for the holidays, and in the meantime, her gallery will stay open through New Year’s, weekly from Thursday through Sunday with, among many others, artists Julia Mitchell, Peigi Cole-Jolliff, and Ilka List’s terra cotta reliefs inspired by refugee crises around the globe.
Obviously it’s not always a laughing matter at A Gallery, but whatever the constantly creative Ms. Augoustinos has in the hopper is bound to appeal. In the winter she normally decamps to her hometown of Johannesburg, South Africa, but, if pressed, she’ll admit the Island is now her authentic base of operations, as she works long and hard to bring art — and laughter! — to us in the off-season.