Review: Artie Lange delivers superlative set in Cohoes

COHOES – Crackling with high energy and revitalized in life and comedy after eight months of detention for drug offenses, the stand-up comic, crappy-movie actor, best-selling author and former Howard Stern radio sidekick Artie Lange performed a superlative show Friday night at Cohoes Music Hall.

In his first appearance headlining a theater since being released Sept. 10 – although he's already done small gigs at comedy clubs – Lange was fast, funny and wholly engaged with the adoring soldout audience throughout his 65-minute performance. (Lange had another show Saturday night in Glens Falls.)

While he hasn't had much stage time, he said in a recent interview that this year's combination of jail, halfway house and drug rehab gave him abundant opportunity to write, including 14 hours of stand-up and most of another memoir. Thus Lange's material felt fresh; even jokes and stories that he acknowledged he'd used in the past were retold with a new perspective that is amazed and appreciative at still being alive, free and working 31 years after Lange's first drug arrest.

His addiction battle had disastrous consequences to his personal life, finances and physical appearance, including a nose that collapsed as a result of its overuse as a drug-ingestion route. But Lange recognizes the extremity and absurdity of the situations he encountered as a result of his drug-chasing ways, and two of them made for epic tales that on Friday were examples of virtuosic comedic storytelling. (Tommy Nicchi, owner of The Comedy Works in Saratoga Springs and also Lange's manager, in his introduction in Cohoes aptly described Lange as a "once-in-generation storyteller.")

In one story, Lange said that after a show in Cleveland, a young fan who like Lange was also a heroin addict drove him 40 miles to Akron to score. Coincidentally, the dealer they visited marked the bags of his different types of heroin with the names of famous addicts, presumably to add cachet, and so Lange, whom the dealer didn't recognize, found himself perusing a drug supply emblazoned with the names Bobby Brown and Artie Lange. (While the theater marquee in Cleveland that night had left the "e" off of Lange's name, he said, the dealer spelled it right.)

In another story, Lange described being enticed into a spontaneous threesome with male and female porn actors in the middle a large party, which to him was a flabbergasting if not unwelcome development. He enjoyed it until – in a moment that Lange's telling dilates into hilarious slow motion – one of the byproducts of copulation went airborne, which somehow led to Lange's dealer, very protective of a celebrity client spending $30,000 a month with him, driving a metallic-blue Corvette, brandishing a loaded handgun and threatening murder.

It is hard to overstate the fervency of the crowd's feeling for and responsiveness to Lange on Friday. Collective, seemingly universal chants of "Artie! Artie! Artie!" broke out three times during his set, and even a brief mention of Donald Trump, which brought both boos and cheers, couldn't for more than a moment divide an audience unison in their delight at being reunited with a beloved entertainer. Lange even mentioned by name two local fans who were in the audience: Jeff "the Drunk" Curro, a Berne resident famous for being part of the Wack Pack on Stern's show, inspired Lange to deliver several spontaneous bits, and Josh Banks, a waiter in Albany who has been part of Lange's podcast and opened for him as a stand-up occasionally, got an appreciative shoutout.

Lange made repeated reference political correctness and a contemporary culture that takes quick offense at humor directed at women and racial and sexual-identity minorities. He had a few cheap shots that traded on tired stereotypes, and his discomfort with the prospect of man-on-man sexual interaction is juvenile. But, unlike Nick DiPaolo's handling of similar material, Lange is today more apt to mock his own mindset and examine why it produces such reactions than he is to merely spray venom at others. The latter is facile and mean; the former is the product of a comedian who, mindful of his ruinous appetites and remarkable string of second chances, continues to improve himself and his art form. Longterm drug addiction is a fearsome opponent, always willing to go another round. Let's hope Lange finally has it beat.

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