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Portland had to do Robby Hoffman a favor. On the cusp of shooting her first Netflix special, the comedian (Hacks, Dying for Sex) needed to work out some jokes at her sold-out Oct. 15 standup gig at the Aladdin Theater.
So instead of doing the scheduled hourlong set, the standup comic, actress and television writer did about 80 minutes to see how a live audience would respond to some new jokes. Verdict: Once it’s whittled back down to an hour, that special is going to be a hilarious and edgy set from one of the most original and exciting comics working today.
Her comedic persona’s perpetual status is “exasperated”—much like another bespectacled Jewish comedian from New York that she is often compared to, Larry David. She is out on the idea of people being queer rather than gay, out on male bisexuals, out on straight men entirely, absolutely destroying them for enjoying American football and not taking out the trash enough. She’s over they/them pronouns, dismissing them from the stage as a phase that rich kids from Wesleyan University needed to feel special.
A lot of this felt risky to say on a Portland stage, but the audience more or less stayed with her. Hoffman, 35, delivered all of these takes in her confrontational New York-style of comedy that is essentially the opposite of “Portland nice.”
Robby, in case you read alt-weeklies, here are my votes: You can toss the bathroom trash-can bit and the crowd work. I’m on the fence with the gross-out lesbian sex jokes. Keep all of the gender politics material, the self-deprecation, and the impression of your wife, Gabby Windey (The Bachelorette, The Traitors), with her cute voice.
Hoffman will return Portland’s favor when she comes back to town Nov. 13 for PAM CUT’s Plus Plus Fest to entertain us again.
