'Regular' Kathleen Madigan sees 'bizarre' things in L.A.

June 15, 2000

"Just a minute, I have to dump my brother."

So begins a phone call with Kathleen Madigan, who headlines through Sunday at the Cleveland Improv.

What did he want?

"He was sucking up to me, seeing if I could get him some free Dave Matthews (Band) tickets."

Ah, the price of show business.

But Madigan has been getting calls for things besides concert tickets. Sunday she taped "VH-1's The List" to debate the top rock living legends with the likes of skater Scott Hamilton, singer Anita Pointer of the Pointer Sisters and actresses Lori Petty and Lolita Davidovich. The show will be aired sometime in July.

"Things like that are fun because there is not so much pressure to make people laugh immediately," she says. "That's why I like doing 'Politically Incorrect,' too. You don't have to worry about having just five minutes and being completely hysterical the entire time."

But television viewers will have the chance to see if Madigan can be hysterical with 30 minutes of new material when her Comedy Central half-hour special airs at 10:30 p.m. July 5. Madigan says she likes this show, taped in a full New York City theater, better than her HBO special a few years ago.

"On HBO, the director always wanted to do something funky, and that doesn't always fit," she explains. "Comedy Central was great. They know how to do stand-up. There's a reason regular stand-up works."

Although Madigan still is covering the same turf of everyday life in her act, she believes it has evolved.

"I'm a lot more confident now," she says. "The (Comedy Central) show is kind of the same topics. There is some sports stuff, a bit on Dr. Laura. I suppose it's a little more newsy compared to things I've done in the past."

Sports fans also will have the chance to see more of Madigan. Fox Sports has signed up a roster of comics for its hour-long sportscast to provide commentary on happenings in the athletic world. And she's getting ready to make the August round of auditions in her home base of Los Angeles for shows that will be midseason replacements.

"It's bizarre," Madigan says of the audition process. "At one audition, it was me and Valerie Bertinelli. She's been acting since she was about 10. I'm supposed to compete with that?"

At other auditions, she's seen former MTV VJ Martha Quinn and Bertinelli's "One Day at a Time" co-star, Mackenzie Phillips.

"In Hollywood, you're either on your way up or on your way down."

To Madigan there appears to be one body type in Hollywood. "Everybody weighs 90 pounds," she says. "I weigh what a normal person should."

Madigan started out as a journalist by process of elimination. "I wasn't good at math and hated science." She stumbled onto an amateur night at the St. Louis Funny Bone Comedy Club. After honing her act for a couple years, Madigan quit journalism and hit the road.

Madigan rates Cleveland as fun place to perform. She shrugs off anyone who says you can't have a good time in Cleveland.

"The people who say that don't even go to places like Pittsburgh, Detroit and Cleveland, so they don't know what they're talking about," she says.

Sometimes people tell Madigan that she goes too fast in her act, but she is confident in her material, so it's not a worry.

"They tell me I need to slow down. I tell them that they need to speed up. My jokes aren't that complicated."

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ON STAGE: Lawrence Thomas headlines through Saturday at Hilarities in Cuyahoga Falls with Scott Dunn as the feature act.

Rodney Bengston, an editor in Sun Newspapers' Metro office, covers northeastern Ohio's comedy scene.