Conan O'Brien at the Orpheum Theatre
Conan O'Brien's Legally Prohibited From Being Funny On Television Tour aims to fill the hole made by his Tonight Show departure with familiar faces, copyright-skirting bits, and shots at the executives who screwed him over. More importantly, it's a chance for Conan to play rock star.
The show at the Orpheum last night was more variety show than stand-up act: Reggie Watts’ quick opening set alone involved Gregorian chant, an R&B song about stalking a woman, and "Fuck Shit Stack," a hip-hop parody that’s funnier than it should be partly because Watts is a competent beat-boxer. The Legally Prohibited Band (essentially The Max Weinberg 7 but with James Wormworth on drums) further riled up the crowd with a La Bamba-belted cover of Curtis Mayfield's "Move On Up" and an impressive display of circular breathing by trumpeter Mark Pender.
After a video summarizing Conan’s post-firing days—a sad-sack montage followed by a getting-back-in-shape montage—the Conanmania was at its peak, and the lengthy standing ovation for O’Brien felt like the culmination of months’ worth of support during a hard time. Fans concerned for his well-being should know that he looks good—good and gangly and bearded, like, as he put it, “Paul Bunyan with an eating disorder.”
O’Brien’s writers have put a lot of thought into tailoring each show for its city, so the first five minutes was all about the weather, skyways, the Twins, the rivalry between the cities, and passive-aggressive behavior. But Minneapolis continued to pop up throughout the 110-minute show, like when Andy Richter read a commercial for the Jucy Lucy, the all-American burger “that’ll have your taste buds screaming, ‘Hey, Mother Russia, fuck you!’”
Having the show feel fresh and new made up for the fact that O’Brien read most of his lines from teleprompters and paced the stage like he can’t stand still without a camera there to make him. But that’s part of his charm: the nervous energy, a few “off-the-cuff” jokes you’ve heard him make night after night. (There was one great, truly unscripted moment: Someone in the audience shouted, “Monorail!” and O’Brien paused to say it blew his mind that people were shouting Simpsons references at him nearly two decades after the fact.)
When he wasn’t telling jokes or introducing slightly altered characters from his old show (hello, Self-Pleasuring Panda), he was strapping on his Stratocaster for classics like “I Will Survive” and “On The Road Again,” albeit with some of the lyrics changed. Because if the guy hadn’t stumbled into this unlikely career as a TV star, you just know he’d be playing in a bar band somewhere and dreaming about jamming with the musicians who've been making cameos on the tour.
Which brings us to our one minor complaint about the show. One thing Conan's crack research team apparently failed to learn about the Twin Cities: You don't introduce a special guest as "one of the greatest guitarists of all time" and then bring out anyone but Prince (no offense to Brian Setzer, the actual guest and a really great guitar player). We are spoiled and therefore easily disappointed. But in all other respects, O'Brien put on a show worthy of lighters in the air.
