On her new stand-up special, Cis Woke Grief Slut, which is available to rent or purchase via Comedy Dynamics following its Jan. 30 release, Laurie Kilmartin challenges her audience to find humor in what are typically considered dark or taboo topics.
“I’m excited that you’re here. I hope you guys like dark comedy,” she said at the top of the show. “People always say they like dark comedy and then you do that one joke that sends them walking.”
Throughout the subsequent hour, Kilmartin challenges this premise, but no one is ever sent walking. Instead the audience members at the El Portal Theater in Los Angeles where the special was recorded, as well as viewers watching at home, find laughing irresistible as the comedian creates funny moments from the most serious of topics. After kicking-off the set with some 9/11-inspired humor, she mines jokes from somber experiences including reading The Diary of Anne Frank to her son and coping with her mother’s death during the pandemic, as well as the topic of abortion.
“Sorry guys I love to tell abortion jokes,” Kilmartin says before sharing a deluge of smart bits about the topic.
In troubled times people often say, “If you don’t laugh, you cry,” but under the deft guidance of Kilmartin, laughter and tears (generated by laughing so hard water wells in your eyes) go hand in hand creating a cathartic coping mechanism for our ailing society.
Kilmartin is no stranger to dark comedy. She often went viral for tweeting jokes about losing her mother to COVID and, before that, she processed the death of her father by writing the authentic and really funny book, Dead People Suck. She was also a writer on CONAN for its entire 11 year run on TBS and spent time working on The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson. Having worked in comedy, performing on stage and writing behind the scenes, for decades, Kilmartin has emerged as one of the most insightful and reliably funny comics working today, but that doesn’t mean she hasn’t angered a few folks along the way.
On Cis Woke Grief Slut, she details the unique experience of going viral for telling an abortion joke on MSNBC. While the viral material itself was what Kilmartin referred to as “not my best joke” – adding “I don’t give the good shit to MSNBC on a Sunday night” – the quip made its way to Sean Hannity who dissected the premise with none other than Lara Trump. Kilmartin weaved this entire experience into a hilarious bit making fun of the hypocrisy of right-wing hysteria while wryly skewering the idea of cancel culture.
Elsewhere, Kilmartin jokes about men who only adopt feminist ideologies after becoming fathers to daughters and, later, she cracks the code as to the real reason why some in power are obsessed with transwomen and bathroom policies. She also gets huge laughs unpacking her love of Black Twitter, detailing how a specific thread almost inspired her to change her own shower habits.
Cis Woke Grief Slut is a hilarious hour-long special that challenges the modern notion that you have to restrict what you say or risk being cancelled. Kilmartin says what she wants and she does so with precision and wit. Sure, she may get trolled on Fox News again, but that experience only promises to become fodder for her next sure-to-be hilarious special.
Laurie Kilmartin: Cis Woke Grief Slut is available to purchase or rent via Apple TV, Amazon, YouTube and other VOD platforms. More information about Laurie Kilmartin can be found at Lauriekilmartin.com.