Review Roundup: Bridget Everett's ROCK BOTTOM at the Public

The Public Theater presents the world premiere of Bridget Everett's ROCK BOTTOM at Joe's Pub, kicking off the 2014-15 downtown season at Astor Place. Created by Bridget Everett, Marc Shaiman, Scott Wittman, Adam "Ad-Rock" Horovitz, and Matt Ray, and directed by Scott Wittman, ROCK BOTTOM was originally commissioned as part of the Joe's Pub 2013 New York Voices series. This shockingly funny and moving new show will run through Saturday, October 11 at Joe's Pub, with an official press opening tonight, September 17.

ROCK BOTTOM is the story of what happens when you're too passionate to give up, and too big to fail. In it, Everett barrels through life tip-toeing toward disaster, wine bottle by wine bottle and man by man. However, instead of succumbing to a chardonnay-induced stupor, Everett embraces a series of revelations that lead her and her voice of an angel to redemption.

Featuring Bridget Everett, the complete cast of ROCK BOTTOM includes Cole Escola, Celisse Henderson and Chelsea Packard.

Let's see what the critics had to say...

Charles Isherwood, The New York Times: "Rock Bottom"...opened at Joe's Pub on Wednesday night in a blast of brash vulgarity and true rock 'n' roll transgression. Who says the city no longer produces artists who challenge, provoke and even, on occasion, dare to disgust?..."Rock Bottom" lets [Everett] run as loose and sing as loud as ever, celebrating the louche life and flaunting her flair for exhibitionism -- sexual, emotional and physical -- across 90 minutes of hair-raising, jaw-dropping and, yes, sometimes cringe-making performance...Everett could be just another filter-free oversharer if she did not possess both a dark, savage humor and, more important, a rich, rangy voice to match her outsize attitude.

David Cote, Time Out NY: How is it possible that for years I've missed Everett's vaginocentric shock comedy and rafter-splitting rock belt? Fear, if we're being truthful. I'd seen the pictures, heard the titles and assumed she was too much woman to handle. Still, her latest cabaret act...is a nice way to ease, semi-lubed, into the Everett aesthetic...Everett works the room like a pro, making customers squirm in their seats as she draws attention to her fulsome attributes, which loll indolently under tissue-thin costumes...It's not all raunch and taboo. Everett brings the house way down with a ballad to her dead father, "Get Over You." And while she doesn't preach, she does flaunt her body, sexual appetites and love of buttery, oaky wine. This trainwreck is bound for glory.

Marilyn Stasio, Variety: This old town hasn't seen a dame as bawdy as Bridget Everett since those big fat mamas who stripped for free drinks at Sammy's Bowery Follies. But you'll just have to take my word on that, since most of the song lyrics in "Rock Bottom," Everett's rollicking cabaret show currently playing at Joe's Pub...are unprintable and her best comedy routines are obscene. The singer-songwriter-performer-provocateur broadened her audience base when she appeared on Comedy Central's "Inside Amy Schumer," but there's nothing quite like seeing her live and onstage, in the (considerable and barely covered) flesh.

Linda Winer, Newsday: In fact, there are a few tender moments in her outlandish, utterly frank show with very few song titles or lyrics I can print here...There is much strong-woman celebration of body parts, some whipped-cream attacks on the crowd and a guy dressed as an unborn baby singing Pat Boone's "Let Me Live." What makes Everett more than a dare-you comedian, however, is her voice. She is the real deal -- a pop, jazz and rock singer who can suggest the gut vulnerability of Janis Joplin, the sultry pain of Peggy Lee, the joy of a '60s girl group and a purity that, for all its incongruity, is very much her own.

Joe Dziemianowicz, New York Daily News: Wardrobe malfunctions and nip slips are no shockers in a show by Bridget Everett, who performs without fear, boundaries or brassiere...Amid the fog of presumably fake booziness...and a thick smog of smuttiness, Everett exposes sharp comic chops and a voice that throbs with power and vulnerability. If Everett, whose star has risen since being on "Inside Amy Schumer," just wanted to sing pretty, she could. Instead, she makes you squirm and laugh -- and she can tear at your heart while she's at it...The show makes Everett's talent and command of an audience loom extra-large.

Jesse Green, Vulture: The character Everett has been honing in alt-cabaret land over the past decadeis a handful, and not just because she's a proudly big gal. Her main interests are sex and Chardonnay, and you sense that it's the latter that has helped her embrace the former. "Embrace" is too mild a word for her sex-positivity, though: She's a one-woman liberation movement for anyone with genitals. Shame is not in the tunestack.

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