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Listen Here Michelle Buteau gets audiences to “Shut Up!” with commanding debut album
With several years’ seasoning as a stand-up, and a growing list of
TV credits including “Key & Peele,” “Last Comic Standing” and VH1,
MTV and Oxygen commentary shows, Michelle Buteau (see
interview, 1/4/07) has just added another key element to
her resume with “Shut Up!” a Comedy Central album showcasing her
stand-up material, released September 4.
The album, accompanied by a corresponding Comedy Central “Half Hour”
special, captures Buteau’s crowd work, onstage attitude and persona,
and some inventive material. Buteau delivers some short stories, and
some riffing on her own life, especially getting married. Along the
way, she lands on some memorable lines with enough force to really
stick in your head.
Buteau’s confident mastery of the stage when confronted with a
disruptive audience member or two – not quite hecklers, more like
drunks who don’t realize they’re thinking out loud – is like a
velvet fist. In response to someone mumbling “I appreciate your
comments,” she mock-sweetly says, “Let me explain to you the way a
comedy show works. I talk … (pause) and you just laugh.” With a
similar tone, Buteau, riffing off a prior bit about Utah and
Mormons, asks the companion of a woman who was also piping up, “Are
you her brother-husband?”
A longer piece on the album, “Gangsta Harry Potter,” shows Buteau’s
storytelling talent and vivid language, talking about a weirdo on
the subway who “digs in his nose like he was looking for an answer.”
In another segment, speaking about family, Buteau recalls her mom
telling her not to get drunk and start talking to strangers, to
which she replied, ‘That’s my thing, don’t take that away from me.’
It’s a nice set-up for one of this album’s memorable lines that
sticks with you.
On “Shut Up!”, you can hear how Buteau connects with audiences and
infuses her material with a sunny personality, even when it’s
sarcastic or cutting, as with a Joan Rivers-style jab at one of the
Kardashians. With this album and special, Buteau stakes a claim on
bigger things in the future.
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