Joan Rivers

Ms Joan Rivers was fierce – in every single way – on stage at the Brighton Centre. A delight of physical comedy, even at 79 years old (as she proudly informed us), she more than poked fun at those that play the bit parts in her star’s life – she lampooned them and served them up for dinner with an orchestral harmony of sparkling shiny flourishes.

Like Jerry Sadowitz with fabulous attire and her own reality shows (plural), the marvellous thing about Joan is that there are no taboos. Howls of guilty laughter resonated into the rafters as the elderly, children, the gay community, the Chinese, and Mexicans were speared with slightly breathless rants from the small but perfectly – if assisted – formed figure on stage, matching a slightly feline eye-make-up to be seen from the back row with a cat-like grace that didn’t match her years as she wrestled with the piano player onto the grand instrument and mocked herself beautifully with an almost slapstick ascent from the floor – “it’s not as easy to get up as it is to get down these days”, she shares.

And that’s the biggest trick, she does share. She is that brilliant woman your mother always shooed you out of the room for whenever she came ’round. Personal, brash, shocking, unrepeatable but so magnetic you can’t leave her alone, Joan Rivers encapsulates the guilty pleasure utterly. Just don’t tell anyone I said so.

Brighton Centre, 20 October 2012

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