100 Words: Maria Bamford at The Den Theatre, Chicago (March 15, 2019)
All too human she comes twitching and bending and switching her voice, her shoulders, her hips, weaving and receiving the adoration of a crowd that’s found the right madness in her impressions of her stoic Minnesota mother and reticent Minnesota dad and of her own unmedicated self. The voices seethe and bubble in her, colliding physical comedy of so many conscience-struck ids, of aging pugs, her husband, her therapist, all coming to a boil on stage in front of this scalded hipster Chicago are-you-not-entertained audience sobbing out laughs. We just met a clown named Maria: grotesquely, we cry: It me.