Paula Poundstone brings her trademark asexual look and her highly interactive “autobiographical” act to the stage of the Count Basie Theatre Saturday night.

By TOM CHESEK

When Paula Poundstone returns to Red Bank’s Count Basie Theatre Saturday night, she’ll bring a road-tested and audience-friendly act that bears the accumulated wisdom of some 30 years of showbiz highs and lows — ranging from coveted honors (the Emmy, the American Comedy Award, and a pair of Cable ACEs) and successful runs in such neglected niches as public radio and game show panels; to at least one of the fastest-cancelled series in TV history.

Then there was that interlude during which she made national news in 2001 — a period marked by a DWI arrest, charges of child endangerment and lewdness, the (temporary) removal of her adopted kids, and her (permanent) removal from the foster parent system. It’s a topic that she’s hardly swept under the rug, whether addressing it in her memoir There’s Nothing in This Book That I Meant to Say, or in a stage act that she characterizes as having “evolved into something extremely autobiographical.”

The 50-year-old comic will be meeting and greeting her audience in the Basie lobby following her 8p show. Until then, nine questions for Paula Poundstone, coming right up.

redbankgreen: So what can we expect to be seeing when you return to the Count’s crib on Saturday?

PAULA POUNDSTONE: Now that I’m 50, I’ll talk a lot about raising kids, animals — I’ll talk about God, and Abe Lincoln, and about being a halfway decent voter.

I talk about politics a little bit — not because I’m always right, and hopefully not in a way that makes everyone else wrong. I’m hoping that even those who espouse different views from mine will find something there — and I approach everything knowing that there’s a possibility that I could be wrong.

Do you prefer these kind of theater-scale gigs to the nightclubs anymore?

A lot of times, people will go out to a club without knowing who’s playing, just to enjoy the club atmosphere. But working in a theater makes things so much more relaxed — you don’t have to go through the whole spanking machine gauntlet.

Isn’t the heckling thing just the flip side to the audience interaction you’ve always specialized in? Do you think audiences these days expect to be part of the show, in one way or another?

They do, but not necessarily in a heckle-y challenge sort of way. When I started out in Boston, I had to come prepared with my ‘heckler lines,’ and then I’d get all nervous, forget the material I prepared, and I’d have to come up with something new to say. That’s the origin of the audience interaction; a variation on the time-honored ‘Hi, where you from?’ thing. It was a way to fold fresh ingredients into the show each night — I’d hear waitresses at the clubs complain about comics who do the same exact thing every night, and I didn’t want to be one of them. I wanted the waitresses to like me!

Speaking as someone who’s ordered the quesadillas at comedy clubs, I’m glad that at least one person in the room was folding in some fresh ingredients. Now, I was looking at your website the other day and I was shocked to discover that you only just released your first CD in the year 2009!

I know; I guess I thought that a CD was harder to do than it was. And I’m glad I did it, because I like to work interactively with the crowd, and I hope that comes across. When I did my first HBO special years ago, they didn’t want me to talk to the audience! But I did, and I got this one audience member telling me this horrible story about her mother injuring herself, cutting her head — it turned out to be a memorable moment, and somehow to this day it’s the most mentioned piece that I’ve done!

Would you say that your way with talking to people has helped you get a little side career going as a game show panelist? Surely it can’t be as easy as you’ve made it look.

That’s a format that plays to my strengths, especially when I have no idea what the specific questions will be — I’ve been doing Wait Wait, Don’t Tell Me on NPR a little less than ten years now. And I’m the luckiest performer in the world, in that these shows have largely sought me out and found me.

Since you’ve been part of the major standup circuit since the early 1980s, what’s your take on the whole Comedy Explosion of those years — how’d it all come about?

I think the real interest in the scene came because of one comedian — Robin Williams. There was such an energy to him; he caught the wave at the right time and he was everywhere back then — there’s not a club that doesn’t have a picture of him on the wall. He would go from headlining a theater show to jumping on stage at a little club for a late set with whoever was in town that night. He did away with the segue in comedy; he went from one thing to the next with breakneck speed, and the rest of us came to work with that, whether we realized it or not.

So then what about the Comedy Implosion? Who or what killed it off?

We had our butts kicked by karaoke! Seriously. It made more sense after a while for a club owner to go that route. Nothing lasts forever of course — I remember playing a so-called comedy club years ago, and noticing that way up in a dark corner of the ceiling was a mirrored disco ball left over from the previous incarnation of the place. I immediately thought, ‘This won’t last.’

Alright, what about the inevitable question of Worst Gig EVER?

That would be when I appeared in front of 30,000 people, inside the Superdome in New Orleans — I was approached to do Farm Aid, me and just one other comic, and my ego got the best of me. Plus I really wanted to meet Willie Nelson and the Neville Brothers. But the only real reason I was there was to give Neil Young time to tune up. It was a six hour show; people had been drinking for hours, and they were in no shape to pay attention to me, especially while Neil Young and his band were tuning their instruments right behind me. Fifty percent of the crowd was yelling at me because they wanted to see Neil Young, and the other fifty percent thought I was Neil Young.

So not every audience interaction is a positive thing — but by and large, would you say that the rapport with the crowd is more essential than ever to your act?

It’s where the magic comes from — at least a third of each show I do is unplanned. My audiences are so enthusiastic — and patient; they’re willing to wait to find the good stuff. And I go away from every place I play with a really good sketch of the community.

Tickets for Saturday’s 8pm show are priced between $19.50 and $39.50, and can be reserved right here.

Steven Wright takes the stage at the Count Basie Theatre Friday night.

By TOM CHESEK

This shouldn’t come as any surprise, but Steven Wright in conversation comes off sounding an awful lot like Steven Wright in performance — maybe even more so.

We have no doubt that the qualities most associated with the 54 year old comedian — the methodical, mumbly, molasses-paced delivery; the tournament-grade poker face, and the entire physical being that seems an extension of his battered porkpie hat — are the stuff of utmost sincerity.

We also believe that the poker face masks a genuine love of life and sense of wonder — a fully rounded persona that the Oscar and Grammy winning writer, actor and musician carries with him like a notebook of observations. While other standup stars of his era (think of the younger versions of Steve Martin and Howie Mandel) hung their manic shtick up on the bedpost each night, Wright has moved through the decades at his own deliberate pace, never really slipping out of style and never appearing anything other than at home in his lived-in skin.

The performer who was called upon to voice Speed the Turtle in The Swan Princess would be the first to admit that he doesn’t work too fast — his two albums of songs were released 12 years apart, and his second DVD came along more than 20 years after the first — and that when he does hit the road these days, he prefers to “go out for a couple of weeks” rather than do a coast-to-coast blitz. It’s on just such an early-June jaunt around the northeast that the Boston-bred Wright comes to Red Bank this Friday night, as the latest comic legend to tread the boards of the Count Basie Theatre.

Clockwise from top left: young Steven Wright in an early 80s standup gig; as The Guy on the Couch in HALF BAKED; with Roberto Begnini in COFFEE AND CIGARETTES; on his Grammy winning album I HAVE A PONY; in his short film ONE SOLDIER; onstage with guitar; in the Madonna movie DESPERATELY SEEKING SUSAN.

In case you were wondering what Wright has in store for the local theater-size audience, the standup star puts to rest any speculation about all-singing, all-dancing multimedia extravaganzas with a terse promise of “the same bizarre things you come to expect… abstractions, insane songs. And the next thing you know, it’s over.”

If anything, that might be too conservatively Wright-wing a take on the comedian’s stock in trade. Alternating between musings and music, a Steven Wright set is simple in structure, but conceptually as complex as the universe in which he wanders and ponders. At his slightly surreal best (”I Xeroxed a mirror. Now I have an extra Xerox machine”), Wright is the witness to a world whose debatable “logic” we tend to take at face value; the guy who turns common sense to nonsense, deconstructs our loopy language and pokes at all the “givens” until they give. Not unlike the comedy pioneer that he cites as “a major influence,” the late George Carlin.

Also like Carlin, Wright is an unorthodox comic mind that navigates the entrenched orthodoxies of the talk show circuit (he demurs from taking sides in the whole Leno-vs.-Conan thing, professing to like  and respect the skills of the hardworking broadcast perennials). He’s also forged an identity as a wordsmith — one who received an Academy Award for the script of his first short film, The Appointments of Dennis Jennings, a twisted little tale of betrayal and revenge that memorably paired the stoic Wright with the mugging Rowan Atkinson.

“I’ll go out, see something, and write about it when I come home,” Wright says of his preferred work habits. “It’s just lines on paper at first, but when you read it you get the jokes.”

An Oscar statuette was not forthcoming — but should have been — for Wright’s titanic turn as The Guy on the Couch in the stoner comedy Half Baked; a performance that resonates with truth, and one that takes its place alongside such brilliant Wright cameos as those he essayed in Natural Born Killers, The Muse, and Jim Jarmusch’s Coffee and Cigarettes.

Onstage, however, with little more than a mike stand and a passionately played guitar, Wright is the whole show; a “peripheral visionary” whose “eyeglass prescription ran out” — and who you can be sure is very happy to be there.

“I make a living from my creativity,” the comic observes. “I tell jokes, play songs, I get to be on TV and movies…it’s the only life  I know.”

Tickets for Friday’s 8pm show are priced between $19.50 - $39.50, and can be reserved right here.

Steve Martin’s energetic comedy ‘Picasso at the Lapin Agile‘ debuted to a full house — and the announcement of a four-performance run extension — at Red Bank’s Two River Theater Saturday night.

Thanks to strong demand, the Bridge Avenue company’s season-ending show is now scheduled to dim the lights after the Sunday, June 13, show, theater officials said.

Tickets are priced from $35 to $61 and are available by calling the TRTC Box Office at 732.345.1400, or visiting the TRTC website.

The photos in the slideshow, above, were taken at the opening-night reception. To enlarge the display, start it, then click the embiggen symbol in the lower right corner. To return to redbankgreen, hit your escape key.

By TOM CHESEK

Ever since the invisible curtain went up on its first mainstage production in 2005, the Two River Theater hasn’t been shy about showcasing the stuff of genius — be it Shakespeare, Shepard or Shaw; Moliere or Beckett; Noel Coward or Tennessee Williams.

You can add Picasso and Einstein to that Mensa mix — but if you do that, you’ll have to make room for Steve Martin too.

Yes, the star of The Man With Two Brains and Dead Men Dont Wear Plaid has a history with the Two River Theater Company, which brought a revival of The Underpants — Martin’s springtime-fresh take on a musty old German farce — to Red Bank in 2007.

Three years later, TRTC revisits the oeuvre of the Emmy- and Grammy-winning renaissance guy — with a new staging of Martin’s all-original play Picasso at the Lapin Agile, previewing tonight and continuing through June 6.

Young Einstein — personified by Drew Hirshfield — shares a big theory, while Bradford Cover and Emily Ackerman appear relatively perplexed.

First produced in 1993 (and set in 1904 Paris), Picasso brings together a couple of the 20th century’s biggest movers and shakers — the titular painter and the young Albert Einstein — for a round of drinks, bawdy stories and some sex-obsessed socializing, at a Montmarte tavern the name of which translates as The Nimble Bunny.

Along the way, these two twentysomething guys — both of whom would be on the cusp of great things in 1904 — debate the roles of Genius, Brains and Talent in the new century, only to have their ideas all shook up by a strange visitor from the future.

It’s a comedy, of course — and to Hal Brooks, it’s the work of an artist with a “well-honed gift for the absurd,” a performer who “was always absurdist in his standup routines. He was never just a yukster.”

The director, whose various acclaimed projects include Obie winners and Pulitzer Prize finalists (as well as My Name is Asher Lev, an adaptation by TRTC’s outgoing artistic director Aaron Posner), sees Martin’s play as “a merging of ideas”  from a familiar figure whose “many incarnations” include fiction writer, painter, magician, dramatic actor, musician and children’s book author.

“Everybody will dig this show,” the Brooklynite Brooks explains, “But not everybody gets what he’s doing here.”

Starring as Picasso for the Red Bank run is Alfredo Narciso, with fellow Two River newcomer Drew Hirshfield as young Einstein. The supporting cast features a few names that might ring a bell with veteran TRTC watchers, including Bradford Cover (Heartbreak House), Glenn Peters (Mere Mortals) — and Emily Ackerman, a player and playwright who’s probably best recalled as the co-author of ReENTRY, the Iraq War oral-history project developed and premiered at Two River last year.

Peters, by the way, will be doing the honors for the now-traditional “BeforePlay” feature — a playfully professorial examination of Steve Martin’s often wild and crazy work — scheduled 45 minutes prior to each performance. In a slightly more serious vein, director Brooks will be participating in a post-show panel discussion entitled “The Meeting of Art and Science Through the Beautiful Mind,” on May 23.

The final mainstage offering of the 2009-2010 season at Two River, Picasso at the Lapin Agile begins previews tonight (it’s sold out); opens Saturday, May 22 (that one’s sold out as well), and runs through Sunday, June 6. Tickets are $35 - $61 and are available by calling the TRTC Box Office at 732.345.1400, or visiting the TRTC website for ticket prices and availability — as well as info on dinner/show packages and other special-event performances.

We should mention here also a couple of other special upcoming events at the theater, both of them revolving around youth, genius — and in one instance, Picasso.

An original “PlayBack” production co-written by and featuring a cast of 13 high schoolers, it’s described as a “surprising, insightful and dynamic theater piece” on “art, science and the search for genius and human connection” — and it happens on the set of the Lapin Agile, June 7 and 8 at 7p.

Then, on the weekend of June 25 and 26, Ackerman’s ReEntry collaborator KJ Sanchez (also, sadly, departing the Two River fold at the end of this season) joins with the company’s performing arts student program to present Life in the Middle, her original rock musical “with dialogue taken directly from middle schoolers” that “looks at what it’s really like to be right in the middle” (talk about your war zones!). Tickets for these two limited-run, bargain-priced premieres are   available through the same channels mentioned above.

Friday night lights: Standup guy “Soul Joel” Richardson (left) hosts another COMEDY ON THE EDGE extravaganza in Red Bank, this one starring Reese Waters (right).

By TOM CHESEK

They used to blanket the map of this great land from coast to coast — places with names like The Chuckle Hut, the Guffaw Garage and the Heh-Heh Hovel. Comedy clubs, they called them, back in the days of the Comedy Explosion, and just like a video rental or a Fotomat, you could be sure to find one in any town you happened into.

Yes, even Red Bank — though we’ll leave it to you to guess which Monmouth Street storefront once housed a short-lived spot for live laffs about 20 years ago.

Here in 2010, the laughs are back within borough borders — and on Broad, no less, as River’s Edge Café plays host to a weekly session of standup (comedy) and sitdown (dinner) produced by Staten Island-based Soul Joel Productions.

Pass the mic: Josh Accardo (left) and Nick Cobb (right) are on the comical card Friday night at River’s Edge Café.

Branded as Comedy on the Edge, the series kicked off as a monthly Thursday event in January, transitioned to an every-other-Friday schedule in April — and, according to “Soul Joel” Richardson himself, is poised to go weekly in June.

The offering returns to Bob Guido’s ristorante at 35 Broad Street this Friday, starring a young pro whose national profile is being boosted by a burgeoning fanbase of sports-snark followers — Reese Waters.

As one of four co-hosts of The Daily Line webcast on Versus.com, Waters has been known to keep some pretty oddball hours, when he’s not busy keeping some pretty charming company for tea. The 30-year-old Richardson, who claims a stable of some 225 thoroughbred funsters (”not a lot of names you’ll recognize, but a lot of faces you’ll recognize from TV”), first worked with Waters over a year ago, and has continued booking the veteran of Comedy Central’s Live at Gotham in Soul Joel shows all over the tri-state region and into the Midwest.

“We specialize in turning any venue into a comedy club,” Soul Joel says. “We bring the equipment, and a different set of comics every time.”

Friday’s snickerfest also features two other standup guys who’ve appeared on Comedy Central and other high-profile forums: Josh Accardo (who wrote, directed and stars in the indie film Recluse) and Nick Cobb (fresh off a Gotham gig of his own). Local dude (and Monmouth U graduate) John Van Brunt bats leadoff, and Richardson — himself no slouch at the mic stand — masters the ceremonies.

Not a bad way to make the nut, for a guy who claims that “growing up, I never realized that all of my favorite TV stars got their start working the comedy clubs.”

Ironic, too, as Richardson theorizes that TV damaged the live comedy business, when “home entertainment systems got so good, they made it hard to leave your house.”

Those who venture out of the house to the River’s Edge are assured of finding “a great, BYOB night out” — with four comic pros for a $10 cover charge, and a $15 food minimum. Showtime’s at 8:30p (no one under 18 admitted), and reservations can be made right here.

Sameerah Luqmaan-Harris (as Charlotte the spider) and Owen Doherty (as Wilbur the pig) perform a scene from CHARLOTTE’S WEB, scheduled to go up in December at Two River Theater.

By TOM CHESEK

There’s a classic work by the most formidable scribe this side of Mr. Shakespeare. A reimagining of one of the most timeless tales in children’s literature. Some long-overdue encores for a couple of New York favorites from the 1960s — and a pair of exciting new items that you may not have heard of.

It’s all on the agenda beginning next September as Red Bank’s resident professional stage troupe, Two River Theater Company, announced its 2010-2011 season of shows with a full-house reception last night at its Bridge Avenue auditorium.

Here’s the lineup:

Lynn Nottage, Michael Hollinger, Herb Gardner and Jacques Brel provide the words and/or the music for the next season of shows at Two River Theater.

INTIMATE APPAREL (September 21 - October 3, 2010). Esther, an African-American seamstress working in New York City, creates beautiful undergarments for a variety of women, from prostitutes to socialites. This ensemble piece by Pulitzer Prize winner Lynn Nottage (Crumbs from the Table of Joy) “weaves a charming tale of romance, acceptance, and independence at the start of the twentieth century.”

OPUS (October 26 – November 14, 2010). In this play by violinist-turned-dramatist Michael Hollinger, “personalities clash, tensions rise, and four musicians grapple with how far they will go to achieve excellence,” as the members of a string quartet are forced to scramble to replace a temperamental star player who’s fired just days before the biggest concert of their careers.

CHARLOTTE’S WEB (December 7, 2010 – January 2, 2011). Joseph Robinette scripted this (non-musical) adaptation of E.B. White’s classic novel for young readers, as a personable pig, a savvy spider and their barnyard friends comprise the cast of characters for the annual Two River family show. The only show in the lineup with a director assigned, this one will be helmed by Matt Pfeiffer (last year’s Charlie Brown) and feature the custom-crafted puppets of Aaron Cromie (whose amazing creations graced the theater’s Our Town a few seasons ago).

A THOUSAND CLOWNS (February 1 – February 20, 2011). A Tony-winning hit on Broadway in the early 1960s (and later a movie starring Jason Robards), the sharply written Herb Gardner comedy concerns a “whip-smart kid,”  his eccentric, fun-loving (and very much unemployed) guardian Uncle Murray — and the choices that have to be made when the social workers knock at their door.

CANDIDA (March 22 – April 10, 2011). Last produced on the Red Bank stage a couple of seasons back with Aaron Posner-directed Heartbreak House, George Bernard Shaw offers a “witty ode to love, faith, beauty, and strong women” in which a clergyman’s wife finds herself torn between her betrothed and a passionate young poet.

JACQUES BREL IS ALIVE AND WELL AND LIVING IN PARIS (May 17 – June 5). A groundbreaking “downtown” hit in the post-Summer of Love era (and subject of a favorite soundtrack album), this “naughty, funny, dark, and romantic” revue of witty, sophisticated songs by the Belgian-born cabaret artist Brel dispenses “a potent mixture of romanticism and cynicism, world-weariness and jaunty whimsy” in a way that continues to influence 21st century Broadway.

Excerpts and songs from several of the announced shows were performed by TRT stage veterans James Sugg, Sameerah Luqmaan-Harris and ten-year-old Owen Doherty of Rumson — while various members of the TRTC family (publicity director Deeksha Gaur, associate artistic director KJ Sanchez, education director Kate Cordaro, director of operations Zeke Zaccaro and head carpenter Duane Noch) took turns speaking and introducing the selections to the capacity crowd.

Saluting Red Bank in his opening remarks, managing director Tom Werder spoke of how the Two River team has come to be “embedded in this amazing community,” and pledged to continue the company’s mission of bringing plays that “celebrate, question, engage and enlighten” to area audiences.

Standing on the set of the current Two River production — an adaptation of the 2,400-year-old Greek tragedy Orestes — company founding father Bob Rechnitz took the stage for some closing remarks, reflecting on the near-religious relationship of the dramatic stage to the earliest theatergoers, and reinforcing the fact that the modern theatrical experience remains “the only temple open to all citizens.”

Meanwhile, Posner’s production of Orestes, A Tragic Romp continues through this weekend in the building’s Rechnitz Theater, joined for one weekend only by the one-man show All Too Human (about which more tomorrow in redbankgreen) in the black-box Marion Huber space. The current season at Two River Theater concludes with a revival of Steve Martin’s Picasso at the Lapin Agile, onstage from May 18 to June 6.

Subscriptions and individual tickets for the 2010-2011 season are available now via the TRTC website; tickets for Charlotte’s Web are sold separately from the season subscription package.

Today’s edition of Red Bank oRBit takes it down to our sister city Long Branch for a look at some pretty exciting things that are in the works within that sprawling seaside scene. The coming days of April, for instance, herald the arrival of an event called Imagine Long Branch, A Masquerade Ball. As the name suggests, it’s an arty party that mixes several generations of people from our local art, music, craft, culinary and commerce communities, in a most unexpected venue — and with custom decorated masks (like the one created and modeled here by Erika Rainey) not only recommended, but available for advance purchase.

We’ll acquaint you with the painters, musicians and business owners behind this slate of events — and we’ll also drop earlybird word on the National Comedy Fest, a high-concept juggernaut of jocularity scheduled to start working the room NEXT April Fool’s Day — not just in Long Branch, but in Red Bank and Asbury Park to boot. You read it here first, right here in Red Bank oRBit!

Well-shod theatergoers enjoyed a reception following the opening -night performance of ‘Barefoot in the Park’ at Red Bank’s Two River Theater on Saturday.

The Neil Simon classic comedy stars Meg Chambers Steedle and John Wernke and runs through February 28.

One’s the most successful writer of comedies in Broadway history. The other’s a serious scholar of classic literature, a retired college professor and founding father of Two River Theater Company. Together they’re teaming up for laughs this Valentine’s season, as Robert M. Rechnitz prepares to open a new production of Neil Simon’s Barefoot in the Park at the Red Bank performing arts auditorium named for Dr. Rechnitz and his wife Joan.

Today’s edition of Red Bank oRBit the details how the professor — a man more likely to be found staging the works of Chekhov, Ibsen and Moliere — came to be “Simonized,” as he tells it, and fall in love with the 1964 comedy by the creator of The Sunshine Boys and The Odd Couple; “a delightful, compelling play that moves like lightning.”

On the eve of the first previews for the production that stars Meg Chambers Steedle and John Wernke (above), director Rechnitz talks about his personal history with this show, about Simon’s lasting legacy, and about how a good romantic comedy brings out the youthful blush in all concerned. Read all about it, right here in Red Bank oRBit!

Ever since we launched our satellite site for all things locally cultural, Red Bank oRBit has brought you the bar-none best coverage of the Two River Theater and all who sail with it — not just the mainstage productions from the borough-based professional troupes Two River Theater Company, but the many “guest events” and interesting characters (Springsteen and BonJo; Philip Seymour Hoffman and Alec Baldwin; Robert Wagner and Kevin Smith) who’ve passed this way through town.

This weekend brings two more special guests to the 2RT stage — starting with national headliner funnyman Mike Marino, who performs on Friday in a Laugh Out Loud comedy event dedicated to the benefit of the Monmouth County nonprofit 180 - Turning Lives Around. Then on Saturday, it’s a night of spiritual songs featuring Joshua Nelson (above), the one-of-a-kind, Oprah-approved Next Big Thing who puts his own soulful gospel spin on traditional Jewish music.

We’ve got the particulars, along with some helpful reminders of what’s going up onstage on Bridge Avenue in the weeks to come, right here in Red Bank oRBit!