Review: Sherri Shepherd Goes Off-Book & Off The Rails With Her Bestie Kym Whitley & Together They Burn The House Down at City Winery

Heigh-Ho, My Merry Rainbow Tribe! Bobby Patrick your RAINBOW Reviewer here. Grabbing that silent T in cabareT to bring you all the Tea!

So, my dearlings, with all this coronation flapdoodle going on across the pond, your rainbow queen here had a royal experience at City Winery Thursday night when the QUEEN serving the Tea was her Royal Highness, stand-up comedian, actress, game show, and Emmy-Winning talk show host supreme, Miss Sherri Shepherd. Through all of the work down through the years that La Shepherd has done, all of her performances and guest appearances as actress, host, and interviewer, the fact that she is a top headlining stand-up comedian might seem a little obscured, and even though, onstage, she self-described as an actress, stand-up is an art she has certainly mastered. BUT, this time she was not alone... Along with DJ ParLay who spun some tunes that had our tablemates

chair dancing, Sherri came with two warm-up openers; actress-comedian and '90s talk show host Rolanda Watts, and Jordan Carlos, a super funny stand-up who was also easy on Bobby's gay eyes. The co-host of The Adulting Podcast with Michelle Buteau, and the former chat show host were both terrific, but they were not the only guest performers, since Sherri's TWO FUNNY MAMAS cohost, Kym Whitley, joined her on stage and, together, they practically burned the house down. After Jordan and Rolanda's hilarious warm-ups (which were perfectly pitched to get the crowd rolling), Sherri took the stage and had a fun 8 minutes before she announced Kym, who joined her pal to make it a comedy duo doing their planned 15 minutes. NINETY-FIVE MINUTES LATER the ladies were still on stage with an audience so out of breath from the gales of laughter we think we heard the sound of ambulances pulling up.

Without any real script or setlist, these two pros created comedy out of thin air, between themselves and between them and the audience, that was unequaled in this rainbow writer's experience. It was a night unlike anything many of us in the trade ever get to see. It was the kind of night comedians go to bed hoping they will dream about. It was chemistry taken to the level of a symphony. Stand-up comedy duos are not unheard of things but they are rarer than single-act comedians who have a set of material that they bring to the stage, along with their own fine-tuned senses that sniff out comic opportunities to create mayhem with and for the audience on the fly. With two comics performing together, there are rules about balance, about how to feed to one another, about who is the "straight man" and who is the comedian. With Shepherd & Whitley, all bets were off and all "rules" flew right out the window, my angels. Late in the set, Kym pointed to a scrap of paper she had dropped on the stool center stage and said, "This was it... This was supposed to be our structure of what to talk about for 15 minutes, and we didn't do it." From talking about divorce and dating woes to being single moms of young boys to epic rants on life, each other, and stories of past craziness, the ladies fed off one another perfectly, catching their partner's fastballs and passing one another gems that lead to laugh after laugh; the whole experience was akin to watching masterful trapeze artists working without a net. When we thought they could not go further... oh they did! When more than an hour had passed with no end in sight, one would have thought they would run out of steam, but ... oh, they did not. The one surprising thing that Sherri brought up was the fact that they had previously approached executives about giving them a big-time network comedy special and they were declined. Not so surprising, sadly, were the misogynistic reasons they heard about two women not being able to capture peoples' interest... and to that Bobby says BALONEY!

To sum up, my lambs, Sherri Shepherd and Kym Whitley at City Winery performed the finest set of comic duo dynamite it has ever been this writer's pleasure to experience. Though this was, technically, supposed to be Sherri's gig and not their TWO FUNNY MAMAS tour, the chemistry, the timing, their laughs, our laughter, the unabashed volleyball game of comedy they played was as exciting to watch as it was to laugh at, and we are so glad Kym came to stay. There is no reason why these two should not be given a prime television special or even an 80s style concert feature film, al la Eddie Murphy or Richard Pryor - that is how good they are together, and if we gave more than 5, we would, but they will just have to settle for Bobby's highest honor ...

5 Out Of 5 Rainbows

Sherri Keeps Her Dot Com: HERE

Kyms Webbysite Is: HERE

Keep Up With The Two Funny Mamas On Their YouTubes: HERE

All Photos By Yours Truly, Bobby Patrick

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