Death can be a powerful driver for comedy, as countless stand-ups and sitcom writers will affirm, but it has to be sensitively handled. Dark humour can be, forgive the pun, life-affirming, and an excuse for the tears, whether of pain or pleasure, to flow.
There’s nothing really dark in Sarah Silverman latest stand-up show PostMortem, her Netflix Special recorded at the Beacon Theatre in New York, and far removed from some of the more shock-value comedy she was once known for.
It’s about the deaths, just nine days apart, of her beloved father, Donald (known as Schleppy) and her stepmother Janice. Donald was clearly a character, as was Janice.
And so, it would seem, was Silverman’s mother Beth Ann, who died some years before Donald and who gets a brief mention here – although, it must be said, with less obvious affection (“She never met a comment card she didn’t fill out”). But maybe that’s another show because, as Silverman says wryly about Donald and Janice’s deaths, they “gave me about an hour of new material”.
We hear about Donald’s famous clothing business in New Hampshire, her stepmother’s distinctive make-up, the Jewish way of doing death, and her father’s last days when Silverman and her sisters cared for him.
He sounds like an interesting man with a great sense of humour – certainly the sarcastic phone messages he left on Silverman’s phone suggest where she got her comedic talent, which led to her becoming a writer and performer on Saturday Night Live early in her career.
She tells a touching story about her short-lived tenure on SNL, and along the way delivers gags about male fetishes, Hitler, bodily fluids and the life cycle of flies, which raise smiles rather than belly laughs.
In truth, this is an affectionate memorial rather than a comedy show, but there are some decent lines in the hour – and Silverman ends on a cracking callback.
