Comedy preview
Kathleen Madigan
7:30 p.m., 10 p.m. Saturday, Feb. 28
$35 in advance, $40 day of show
Variety Playhouse
1099 Euclid Ave., NE, Atlanta
Kathleen Madigan is one of those stand-up comics who comes across so casually and comfortably on stage, she could just as easily be in your living room sipping a glass of chardonnay after dinner.
Her low-key Midwestern charm is decidedly anti-Kardashian. She isn’t all about bolstering her brand. She isn’t gunning for a talk show or pitching a reality show focused on herself.
Madigan just loves to stand on a stage and tell stories.
She is popular enough in Atlanta that she can do two shows at the 1,000-seat Variety Playhouse, where she last performed in 2013 and will return Feb. 28.
“It’s kind of raw,” Madigan said. “It’s kind of clubby. I like the vibe. I’d rather do two shows there than one in a larger theater that feels sterile and uptight. Some of these places, I feel like I should be doing a lecture on dolphins, they’re so serious.”
Madigan, who has been in comedy game for a quarter century, is placing comedy specials on Netflix instead of Comedy Central or HBO. “You can watch it any time you want,” she said. “There’s no BS with them. They pay a reasonable amount. No headaches. No problems. They don’t bother you about material. They don’t even care. There’s a trust there. You do a special. We pay for it! We don’t ever have to speak again! They’re like the kids in the Genius Bar. The networks are like walking into Macy’s.”
She uses her comedy specials as marketing tools to get people to buy tickets to shows, she said. It seems to work.
She enjoys her life, which includes 200 days on the road — typically one-night stands instead of entire weekends in smaller clubs. Plus, she takes summers off. “I feel like a kid and I have money to spend!”
Her exposure was greatly enhanced by “Last Comic Standing” 11 years ago. She recently received a royalty check because the repeats aired somewhere overseas. (“I got a weird request for head shots from Prague,” she said.) It was enough money — around $1,100 — for her to buy a replacement fountain for her L.A. home.
When networks offer her sitcom roles, she sincerely says no. “They then come back with more money or a better arrangement as if I’m bargaining with them,” she said. “With the amount of success I’ve had, I don’t have to do it. It doesn’t interest me.”
She isn’t totally against TV appearances. She’s friends with Comedy Central’s new talk show host Larry Wilmore and appeared on the second night of his 11:30 p.m. program last month. “He’s smart. He’s silly. I’ve always been a big fan. I’ll do it again,” she said.
Madigan, who worked at the Punchline Comedy Club regularly in the 1990s, is saddened it's being forced to leave its 33-year-old home in April after the landlord decided not to renew their lease.
“There’s something about the physical design of the club,” she said. “It’s like a barn in a great way with the hard wood, which keeps all the sound in. I wish they could pick it up and move it somewhere else.
