A Conundrum Like Maria

THE SPECIAL SPECIAL SPECIAL! (A-minus) - Oh, my God. What was that?

I don't know of any other comedian (or a dramatic actor, for that matter) willing to expose herself and spill the fascinating and frightening contents of her brain out on a stage like Maria Bamford has done here. And in this case, the stage is the living room of her home, with just her two parents in the audience. Top that for brave and bizarre.

What unfolds is either a nervous breakdown or the most compelling stand-up set you'll ever see. (I suppose it could be both.) In poker parlance, Bamford takes Jonathan Winters and Robin Williams and raises them a hundred. She takes Pee-wee Herman's shtick and lives it. She makes Richard Pryor's confessions seem like G-rated hokum.

As her folks look on a bit nervously, voices spill out of their daughter, characters pop up and flit away just as quickly. Her stream-of-conscious riffs are exhausting. Her food issues are disturbing yet hilarious:

"Squeezy cheese on finger, can of wine!"
"Hot power bar from glove compartment. Fresh from the oven!"
Gas station tuna fish sandwich? "A scrumptious fishy nougat!"

She riffs on wannabe-hipster church pastors trying to lure kids into church by running teen centers mysteriously named Vineyard Outreach, Oasis or The Rock. She compares belief in god to the experience of wandering around a third-world country at midnight and spotting a familiar corporate logo off in the distance. And there's People (mag) worship: "And the worst-dressed shall be the best-dressed, and the best-dressed shall be the worst-dressed!"

She is heavily made up and overly coiffed, as if she's wearing a scary Dr. Laura mask, her eyes both challenging and imploring. Near the end you want to run up onto the "stage" and rescue her before she breaks down while riffing on suicide that isn't always entirely humorous. The voices won't stop popping out of every corner of her brain. An ode to her dead dog morphs into the voice of a golden-age Hollywood vixen waxing on about Berlin before the war.

This is a hallucinogenic experience. It's a stand-up special, so the bits won't translate here. Take a dare. Watch this brilliant comic.