When Louis C.K. headlined the theater at Madison Square Garden in August, he reportedly performed in front of a large backdrop that read SORRY.
No such message was on display at the Orpheum Theatre in Boston on Friday, when the comedian played the first of two sold-out homecoming shows. It’s been four years since C.K. admitted to multiple disturbing allegations of sexual misconduct. “I have spent my long and lucky career talking and saying anything I want,” as he concluded in a statement of apology at the time. “I will now step back and take a long time to listen.”
A year later, protesters demonstrated outside his appearance at the Comedy Cellar in New York City. His recent Grammy nomination — he’s up for best comedy album for his latest special, “Sincerely Louis C.K.” — has been a source of controversy.
Now, however, having spent most of two years in self-imposed exile and another year and a half in lockdown like the rest of us, the comedian is calculating that he has served his penance.
“How have you all been enjoying living the way I was living the last couple of years?” he asked near the beginning of his hour-plus set, drawing laughs. The Orpheum shows were makeup dates for postponed appearances scheduled in early April 2020.
C.K., whose real surname is Szekely, has always been a generous supporter of fellow comedians he admires (other than the aspiring women he preyed upon, that is). Before he took the stage, two openers warmed up the room with solid 10-minute sets — local comedy mainstay Tony V (“the first to give a [hoot]” about his budding career, C.K. said), followed by brash Long Island native Lynne Koplitz, who joked that she’s the kind of woman “men in Texas call ‘a handful.’ ”
True to the transgressive material upon which he built his pre-scandal reputation as perhaps the best stand-up in the business, C.K.’s set featured long, topical chunks crafted to confront listeners with their hypocrisies and make them question their own ethics.
Though there was no mention of his personal disgrace, the first segment of the set seemed like a defiant exercise in moral relativism. During an extended, deliberately uncomfortable sequence on the age-old problem of child sex abuse, he mentioned a certain deceased pop star: “What’s worse, a pedophile who makes beautiful music, or one that doesn’t?”
One tangent about how our society treats overweight people led to an old news story about a woman who was too big for an MRI, so the doctor referred her to the Bronx Zoo. This inspired a brief portrayal of a skinny elephant undergoing chemotherapy treatment. Humor armors us against the reality of horrible things, and this remains one of C.K.’s greatest attributes.
His own lumbering physicality is part of the deal. In an aside, he recalled being repulsed by a man he spotted eating a banana: The guy held it at the very bottom and peeled it all the way down, he explained. C.K.’s enactment of the banana cowering in its sudden nudity — “I have a bruise over here,” he whimpered, pointing to the back of his leg — was sublime.
Elsewhere, he mused on the protests of recent years (simply holding a sign that reads “Abolish Billionaires” probably isn’t going to get it done, he joked), his admiration for the younger generations’ embrace of fluid gender roles and sexuality (they’ve created “expansion teams,” as he put it), and the random stray hairs that have been cropping up lately atop his bald pate. For that one, he gave one of those hairs the voice of a small child: “Can I try?”
The pandemic, he said, has provided the unexpected benefit of making us all “look nice” by emphasizing the eyes and covering our mouths, “the worst hole” on the body.
At one point C.K. peered into the crowd to identify his three sisters, all of whom stood up. At their childhood home in Newton, he said, “the Turnpike was my backyard.”
Their mother died recently, he said. He was the only one with her when she went. His sisters, he claimed, were all stuck in traffic.
He didn’t want her to go, he’d told her.
“You’ll get over it,” she said.
Email James Sullivan at jamesgsullivan@gmail.com. Follow him on Twitter @sullivanjames.
LOUIS C.K.
At the Orpheum Theatre, Friday