April 22-28, 2004

mixpicks

Setting the Barr

Frank Halperin

A self-driven Cinderella story, collared blue: Once upon a time, in 1980, a Denver housewife and mother with an amazing prowess for cracking wise and spewing raw truths transformed herself into a domestic goddess. "I am Woman," Roseanne Barr would proclaim, and, in countless comedy clubs, she roared -- as did her audiences, in large numbers. After Johnny Carson, the once-monarchic standup career maker and breaker, verbalized a guarantee that she would be the "biggest woman comic ever" following her auspicious debut, a prophetic letter she wrote to herself in the past -- a letter that had remained sealed until the few moments before she took her mark on The Tonight Show stage -- would now come to pass: "This is the beginning of your life," the words said, "for She who is and is not yet." Soon the Carsey-Werner sitcom juggernaut would make her, for nine seasons on ABC, the Cleopatra of family values, swathed in sardonic-flannel existentialism.

It's been 14 years since Barr has committed a standup assault, but it's something she's now primed to perpetrate. Relaxed and focused on the phone from California, Ms. Barr says her new act resonates with "an expanded vision of herself" and is enthusiastic about her Keswick gig. "It's always fun," she says, "to break the rules in a positive way." Her nascent endeavors have recently included writing for an alternative publication called Big Mama Rag ("the stuff was very political") as well as Heavy Metal magazine ("I wrote the dialogue for some comic strips."). She loves discussing musical tastes (Etta James, James Brown, Billie Holliday, Patti Smith and Phoebe Snow are among her favorites) and her good-natured prediction for apocalypse now: "I'm sure that the end of the world is coming," she says, "and I think people ought to celebrate the good things about it, like the whole diet industry completely blowing up." No doubt she'll be the last person standing Saturday night, while her audience succumbs to her lethal wit.

Roseanne Barr, Sat., April 24, 8 p.m., $39.50-$48.50, Keswick Theatre, Easton Rd. and Keswick Ave., Glenside, 215-572-7650.