Cat’s Cradle Carrboro, NC
Contact: ahong@mosaicla.com
Web: bethstelling.com
Players: Beth Stelling, vocals
Stand-up comedy is hard. And the transition from a TV writers’ room (funny behind the scenes) is a complicated metamorphous. Bob Odenkirk did it, and George Carlin slid into stand-up from a successful radio jam...
Beth Stelling has the resumé and she’s worked on numerous TV Specials and smaller Hollywood gigs before her breech-birth onto the Cat’s Cradle Sage. Stelling jumped onto the stage and opened with a few bits from her “Landlord Special” which hit the funny bone dead on of the small but very appreciative crowd.
Her observational humor centered on the people in her life, people in her L.A. community and her neighbors who were an endless source of mirth and merriment! With mic in hand, she walked back and forth across the stage, made bigger and larger by her expansive personality, flipping between scenes of unimaginable refrigerator science project horror and landlord escapades, all delivered with energy and endearing self-deprecation.
Most of the audience were left waiting for the punch lines, many of which never appeared, but that is the playbook for stream of consciousness, on the spot off the cuff.
It's a credit to her power of delivery that she got high milage in the neighbor and landlord bits department. She’s on her way to being the Taylor Swift of wacky delivery and split-second timing. This was a study in deadpan, but not the Steven Wright deadpan. This was a slow burn that took a few minutes for the punchlines to catch up.
She got plenty of milage out of marriage, travel, family, and college which provided endless opportunities for funny, which she exploited effortlessly.
Funny? Sort of.
The post Live Review of Beth Stelling first appeared on Music Connection Magazine.