Dave Chappelle took the stage last night to an adoring audience in Camden, NJ, where he co-headlined the Oddball Comedy and Curiosity Festival with the Flight of the Conchords.
But while his body might have been in Camden, his thoughts remained in Hartford.
Last week, Chappelle, for whom this tour marks something of a return to the public eye, had a disastrous show there when the audience reportedly became so out of control that he gave up in mid-set, sitting on stage, reading a book, and insulting the crowd.
Taking the stage, he greeted a ferocious audience reception with, "Welcome to the Dave Chappelle 'meltdown' " — the quotes were his — and spent the next few minutes trashing Hartford and its mayor, who reacted with anger when Chappelle said the other night that he wouldn't be upset if the city fell victim to a nuclear attack.
The veteran comic got off some good lines — he remarked that the feud felt like he was having "a rap battle with an entire city" — but the whole thing felt a bit petty.
Chappelle has experienced — or precipitated — a number of similarly bad gigs over the past few years, all of which found him giving up in the middle and smoking cigarettes on stage while ignoring the crowd. At a certain point, given his vast experience — Chappelle, 40, has been a stand-up comedian since he was 14 years old — it's hard to accept that these awful gigs are completely out of his control.
That said, once he finally got off the topic of Hartford — he even brought out two models who wore T-shirts he had made that read, "F–k Hartford" — the show became much stronger.
His prepared material included riffs on Dennis Rodman's trip to North Korea, including an imitation of the president saying to Kim Jong Un, "Don't you hurt one pink or yellow hair on his head"; a joke comparing his return to show business with "a real boy who wants to be a puppet"; and a hilarious and unprintable bit that played off a common slang word for female genitalia, including how gynecology is affected by doctors not being able to say the word, and a riff about the many ways the word might be used by rapper Lil Wayne, including on a cooking show.
Best of all, Chappelle showed far more patience with the audience than he has at certain other shows. In the middle of his set, a woman in the crowd screamed out that she wanted a hug. Chappelle turned the interruption into a warm, nurturing, and, most important, funny bit, including bringing her on stage for a lengthy embrace, then telling her husband, "Don't worry. I'm gonna send her back in better condition than when I found her."
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