SANDRA BERNHARD, 'WITHOUT YOU I'M NOTHING' 2009 REVIEW

Sandra Bernhard is a name and face many of us know, mainly because of her two most famous roles; she played the mouthy lesbian in the nineties TV series Roseanne and also Madonna’s real life ‘girl-friend’ for a brief period in the late eighties.

She’s now 54 and on Friday she closed the London run of her reprised Broadway hit show ‘Without You I’m Nothing’, 20 years after the original opened.

Bernhard looked stunning – wearing ridiculously high heels and leather trousers a woman half her age would struggle to pull on, let alone off. It’s hard to believe she’s only three years younger than Roseanne Barr who appeared very much past her sell by date when she performed at the same London theatre earlier this year. Bernhard, on the other hand proved that her satirically honest routine was ahead of its time in the eighties as she was greeted with a sense of credit crunch relief by the mainly female crowd at the Leicester Square Theatre.

She adapted her show to her audience, sharing her opinions on the British media with her perceptive gaze being cast in the direction of Richard and Judy, the ‘Loose’ Women, Susan Boyle, Simon Cowell and Andrew Lloyd Webber. Her voice was powerful and her comic timing excellent. Her performance felt effortless – and not just because she had a crib sheet with her. Predictably, the fact that she occassionally referred to a sheet didn’t go down well with the UK broadsheet critics. Personally I couldn’t give a sh**, I think it’s fair to assume Bernhard doesn’t either.

There was never a boring moment as she flowed from speech to song in such a way that the ‘oh no, not another song’ thought I’m usually prone to, never even entered my head. Her voice and range were impressive – her take on Jolene, inserting herself smack bang in the middle of the Jolie/Aniston/Pitt triangle, was sheer comedy genius as was her tried and tested piss-take rendition of ‘Me and Mrs Jones’.

“My father was a proctologist and my mother was an abstract artist, so that’s how I view the world”.

She first delivered this line 20 years ago – and she has stuck by it ever since.

A celebrity who’s stayed true to herself is hard to find these days. A celebrity who can get a whole audience belly laughing for the best part of 120 minutes even harder.

Bernhard is both.

If you happen to find yourself in New York this Wednesday, the 10th June you can catch her final 20th anniversary performance. Not quite her Silver Jubilee yet – which may have been more appropriate for the original Queen of Comedy.

Posted 09:20 AM on Tue Jun 09 2009

By Media Mogul

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