Reviewed by Joe Regan Jr.
October 4, 2012
Robbyne Kaamil, a proud Black woman, is presenting her current show Raw & Real: Life from One Woman’s Perspective at the Duplex in New York City. Kaamil is a stand up comic in the tradition of Lenny Bruce (but she uses language that even Joan Rivers doesn’t use in her shows). There is much use of the expression “M—-r F—–r” but her shows have a strong political and feminist narrative thread and when her audiences get the point she gets hysterically loud laughter and audience responses. She embraces vulgarity and honesty to share her views on racism, sex (the good, the bad and the nasty), relationships, police brutality, and the perils of being a “nigger with a shopping bag.” Kaamil has appeared on The Howard Stern Show, Queer Eye for the Straight Guy, and is a favorite celebrity on cable channel HERE TV. She has published a poetry book Get Off the Titty. She has been featured as a relationship expert in Essence, Next, and Odyssey magazines, on East Village Radio, Sirius Radio, Clear Channel 98 Rock and CBS Radio — Baltimore. Her shows are definitely not for children.
The current show is a wonderful mix of coarse language, with a strain of what she calls haiku poems, narrative experiences, and even some especially appropriate songs from the Great American Songbook, sung a cappella but always in her character as the “Broke Black Bitch from Brooklyn.” Introduced offstage by a disco song “Bad Girl” she sings “Tomorrow” from Annie and relates that song to young black girls living in the ghetto, with absent parents who are drug addicts or prostitutes and who seek refuge in sex with black or white boys. There is a long section on how great black women’s sexual organs are the key to happiness and the shortcomings of men’s penises that are not sizeable. Her haiku poems deal directly with these images and some of them are remarkably emotionally moving. The poems are awe-inspiring, some with distressed endings, delineating the problems of getting out of the ghetto
.
There is a wonderful section on how ordinary people, not politicians, cause changes in the world socially. She relates quite accurately how it was ordinary people who have caused most of the social changes in the Twentieth Century. She tells us again how Rosa Parks refused to move to the colored section of her bus, causing a long protest by blacks to boycott the buses and walk miles to work for several days before Lyndon Johnson put the Civil Rights of blacks into law; how it was ordinary drag queens who fought back in protest to the police at the Stonewall Inn which was the beginning of gay rights (noting humorously how stupid the police were to raid that bar the weekend that Judy Garland died) and tells us of an unsung heroine, Viola Liuzzio, an Italian American mother of five who left her children behind in the Midwest to go to Mississippi to register black voters and was murdered by the Klu Klux Khan. Another unsung hero is the white Jew, Jack Greenberg, who also traveled to Mississippi to participate in all the Civil Rights protests and Freedom Marches and did pro bono work as one of the founders of the NAACP. These monologues lead into a stirring rendition of “Strange Fruit,” the Billie Holiday classic.
She reads a speech a Caribbean racist gave to slave owners in Georgia in 1712 about how the White Masters should treat their slaves. There is a poignant scene in which Kaamil portrays a faithful churchgoer who always pays her tithe to the church even when she is unemployed, how she volunteers in all the church charitable work aiding in hospital outreach and other church activities until she realizes that money should be what she should worship. She dramatically says that she is supposed to keep up “with the Joneses” but demands to know who those “Joneses” really are. She has never met any of them and it’s they who keep her in debt. She also mocks the current celebrities who are famous for being famous and how several of the white women are tanning their skin and enhancing their lips and their butts to look like black women! She doesn’t omit how black men victimize their women, beating them, making them dependant on drugs, taking all their possessions, and also proudly stealing the cash from women living on their Social Security checks.
Kaamil ends the show with hope, telling everyone that hope is the only thing that will get them out of the ghetto and sings an appropriately optimistic “If They Could See Me Now.” Although you may be laughing at her outrageous punch lines, the show has a strong theme and it summarizes her survival and demonstrates that her seemingly random stream of thoughts and raunchiness has a universal meaning for everyone. Above all, it is entertaining. It is a brilliant finish as she raises up her bag to promote her charitable cause to help victimized black women. If you donate you get a copy of her video “The Bitch Has Arrived,” which is Pudden Tame Productions’ video of this show. Kaamil is one of a kind and for those who enjoy an adult, informative, and stunning show this is the show to see!
Robbyne Kaamil’s Raw & Real repeats Saturday, October 6th at 4:30 PM at the Duplex, 61 Christopher Street. Reservations are required by calling (212) 255-5438 and at the Duplex website www.the duplex.com . The cover is $15 and there is a 2 drink minimum.
Posted by Sandi Durell
on October 5, 2012. Filed under Cabaret,Cabaret and Interviews - Sandi Durell,COLUMNS,ENTERTAIMENT.
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