Comedy

Observational comic Orny Adams warms up a new room at Red Rock

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If Rocks Lounge continues to bring in comedians as capable as Orny Adams, the room could really thrive.
Photo: Bill Hughes
Jason Harris

Three stars

Orny Adams November 21, Rocks Lounge.

Sometimes it’s not just about how funny you are, but what you’re able to do to get the audience in the mood to laugh. What tools does one have in his belt when things don’t go peachy from the jump? On Saturday night at Red Rock Resort, Massachusetts’ Orny Adams used a variety of skills to take a cold audience and get it hot.

It starts with the room. This was only the second comedy show at the Rocks Lounge, which is experimenting with a monthly night. It was clear things weren’t going to be easy when opener Carla Rea, one of Las Vegas’ most consistently funny comics, had to scratch and claw her way to laughs from the half-full room.

Adams’ start was similar, but things tilted when a cell phone went off. Instead of crushing the guilty party, Adams used it to get into a joke, “Remember when we thought call waiting was rude? It doesn’t even bother us anymore. Sometimes I don’t even tell people when I’m clicking over. They’re on a roll. I just sneak it in. I come back, they’re still going. They didn’t even know I was gone.”

This type of observational humor made Adams a natural costar for Jerry Seinfeld in the 2002 documentary film Comedian. Like Seinfeld, Adams is a tight writer, wringing punchlines out of the mundane. On a conversation with the cable company, in which he tried to get his bill lowered and the woman asked for the last four digits of his social security number: “I’m calling to lower my bill. If anybody calls to lower my bill, lower it! Put that in the notes. If anybody calls to lower the bill, lower it.”

Unlike Seinfeld, Adams has a manic energy about him. He paces the stage, using different postures and poses for his bits. Most effectively, he often moves away from the microphone yelling certain points to the crowd with an anger similar to Lewis Black’s. Adams built momentum winning the crowd piece by piece, as evidenced by the response to his closer about low testosterone: “Low T is the greatest thing that happens to men. Every bad decision I ever made was on high T. Nothing bothers low-T man. I’m driving. Someone flips me off in traffic. Low-T guy just keeps going. I go out on a date. I don’t think she likes me. Great, I’ll get eight hours of sleep tonight.”

If Rocks Lounge continues to bring in comedians this capable, the room could really thrive.

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