REVIEW

Cosby has crowd in hysterics

— Bill Cosby no longer does stand-up comedy.

Cosby, who crossed the line between “comedian” and “humorist” years ago, even before he started writing books, now sits down to do what he does, which is to make everyday experiences wondrous and hilarious. Which is what he did to wondrous and hilarious effect Sunday afternoon at Little Rock’s Robinson Center Music Hall.

The man had the not-quite capacity audience in hysterics with no other assistance than an antique table; a tissue box; a bottle of Mountain Valley water; a microphone; and a chair, originally draped with a “Hello Friend” sweatshirt (a tribute to his late son, Ennis) but, 10 minutes before curtain, covered over with a black-and-red Razorback throw. Oh, and a big screen to make extra visible his every expression, because Cosby’s(unshaven on this occasion) rubber face has always been his second-best asset.

Starting this all-new act with his wife’s stern reaction to his diagnosis of high cholesterol, Cosby stitched up the crowd with a story about what it took to sneak a pair of chocolate chip cookies out of a restaurant bakery,topping it off with a 5-year old explaining the meaning of Holy Week.

He parlayed that neatly into a reminiscence on the thrills and chills of teenage dating (“When you’re 16, you have two things going for you: hope and stupidity”), with a particular emphasis on the dangers of cologne-ialism and how a young woman’s father brought an eager young man, basking in a temporary success via four Miles Davis albums, back into line.

Though he promised in a pre-concert interview that he wouldn’t do the long-standing dentist sketch, a fragment of it did sneak in through what Cosby called “an appetizer for my app,” a few-minutes-long infomercial introducing folks to what they’ll find on OBKB, his new downloadable smart phone “network.”

Arkansas, Pages 9 on 04/02/2012

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