Robin Williams: An Evening at the Met
The people at the Met are going, “You ain’t comin’ back, I’ll tell you that right now. You ain’t comin’ back after what you did!” But we did it! Ha, ha, ha!
- Robin Williams, at the conclusion of his performance at the Met
This August 1986 concert performance at the Metropolitan Opera House in New York City -- the first ever by a solo comic -- is probably the quintessential and defining Robin Williams “live” performance. (Robin, who was thirty-four at the time, performed two shows -- one on Saturday, August 9th, and one on Sunday, August 10th, both at 8:30 p.m.).
Robin’s performance is meticulously structured and extremely polished and it is obvious that at this point in his career, he was a consummate stand-up performer with flawless timing and brilliant material. There were no props, other than a few set decorations belonging to the Met that Robin ad-libbed a couple of gags off of, and the only musical number was Robin’s a capella “Opera Rap,” which he wrote especially for his appearance here and performed during his encore.
This concert (which was originally broadcast as an HBO special presentation) begins with the viewer being ushered out of their home, into a limousine, and driven to the Met, all to the accompanying strains of Mozart.
Inside the Met, just before the show begins, the voice of Robin Williams suddenly booms out over the audience:
Ladies and gentlemen, may I have your attention, please? There will be a minor change in the program tonight. The part of Robin Williams will be played by The Temptations.
Robin is then introduced and bounds onstage to a huge ovation, wearing black satin pants, a blue Hawaiian short, and red shoes. His first joke (after the improvised ballet steps he did as he came on stage) was, “Howdeeee! . . . Oops, wrong opera house!” The magnificent chandeliers were still rising up to ceiling as they do before all performances at the Met and Robin then cracked a joke in which he thanked Imelda Marcos for the use of her earrings.
After rhetorically asking, “What the fuck am I doing here?”, he then posed the traditional question, “How do you get to the Met?,” but instead of the traditional answer (“Practice”), Robin supplied the eighties answer: “Money!”
He then did a brief but hilarious bit in which he wondered aloud if Pavarotti was over at the Improv, going, “Two Jews walk into a bar,” (in a requisite Italian accent, of course). He then expanded this gag by imitating renowned tenor Placido Domingo doing The Music Man.
All of this hilarity took place within the first few seconds of Robin taking the Met’s stage and from there, it only got better. Robin obviously prepared carefully for this performance and we get the sense that he did not leave too much room for freewheeling improvisation (as he clearly did for his 1982 San Francisco concert in which he wandered through the audience for minutes at a time, goofing on people left and right).
Here are the highlights of Robin’s rare appearance at that most august of American performance venues, the Metropolitan Opera House.
After admitting that he was “scared shitless,” Robin’s first topics for this concert included Prince Charles, Southerners, Abraham Lincoln, Leave It To Beaver, Robin Leach, and ballet. (During his riff on ballet, he again used his all-time favorite joke, stating, “Ballet is men wearing pants so tight you can tell what religion they are.” [See the feature on this joke.])
Robin then did a lengthy routine on his drinking days. He told the audience he had to stop drinking alcohol because he used to wake up nude on the hood of his car with his keys in his ass. Topics for this bit also included wine with screw caps and hangovers.
After talking about booze, Robin then moved to the subjects of marijuana and cocaine, talking about paranoia, driving while stoned, freebasing (“It’s not free! It costs you your house!”), and thoughtfully providing a three-part test to determine if you have a cocaine problem:
“1. If you come to your house, you have no furniture, and your cat’s going, ‘I’m outta here, prick!’ -- Warning!
“2. If you have this dream where you’re doing cocaine in your sleep and you can’t fall asleep, and you’re doing cocaine in your sleep and you can’t fall asleep, and you wake up and you’re doing cocaine -- Bingo!
“3. If on your tax form it says $50,000 for snacks -- Mayday!”
Moving on, Robin then talked about football players on steroids, golf, marathon runners, yuppies, Japanese people, Hollywood cops (“Stop! Those shoes don’t go with that bag!”), New York cops, Southern cops (“They wear sunglasses with the mirrors on the inside”), and Southern justice.
While speaking of the South, Robin came up with this hilarious observation (which got a huge laugh): “Isn’t it strange to think that if you commit sodomy in Georgia, they’re gonna put you in a cell with another man who’s gonna sodomize you? That’s Southern logic!”
From here, Robin tackled gun control, armor-piercing bullets, Pearl Harbor, and Ronald Reagan. While talking about Reagan, Robin did a hilarious routine in which he imagined politicians as actors in one giant, real-life movie. He did impeccable imitations of John Wayne as Tip O’Neill; Bela Lugosi as Casper Weinberger; Laurel and Hardy as George Bush and George Schulz; The Phantom of the Opera as Teddy Kennedy; and Obi Wan Kenobi and Princess Leia as Ronald and Nancy Reagan. He also mused that political summit meetings between world leaders should be held at Carmine’s Clam Bar in the Bronx with a guy named Vinnie moderating. He also said that the truth about Reagan is that he was really Richard Nixon wearing a Ronald Reagan mask.
Interestingly, Robin then made one of his exceedingly rare pop culture errors. While imitating Nixon pulling off his Reagan mask, he said, “It’s Halloween Part 5 -- Jason’s back and he’s pissed off!” As all devoted horror fans know, however, Jason was the bad guy in the Friday the 13th series. Michael Myers was the boogeyman in the Halloween series.
Around the time of this concert, Richard Nixon had been on the cover of Newsweek. Robin’s spin on that? “Richard Nixon on the cover of Newsweek is like John Hinckley on the cover of Guns & Ammo.”
Robin then tackled the Middle East, South Africa, George Wallace, Lester Maddox, Prime Minister Botha, alleged former Nazi Kurt Waldheim, and the United Nations.
Next in the crosshairs were TV evangelists, pollution, Chernobyl, and spring fever, which led Robin to a lengthy (sorry) discussion of his penis. From here he moved to the idea of a woman as President (“There would never be any wars. Just every twenty-eight days some intense negotiations”), menstruation, and the fantasy of Miss Right (“Or at least Miss Right Now.”)
Robin then let loose with a hilarious one-liner about sex therapist Dr. Ruth: “Here’s a woman talking about oral sex and you know she doesn’t even eat pork.” He followed this with a lengthy and very funny routine about a black woman sex therapist named Dr. Roof, a non-nonsense sister who told men exactly where it was at and what they did wrong making love. Taking on the persona of the good doctor, Robin discussed oral sex, foreplay, and condoms, which led him to his longest routine of the evening, a funny and touching segment on pregnancy, labor, childbirth, and parenthood.
In a truly clever and inventive routine, Robin talked about the Chromosome Square Dance, the Titty Fairy, the Hormone Fairy, and then explained what he called “Sharing the Birth Experience,” the current fashionable attempt to involve the father in the birth process.
This is absolutely not possible, Robin declared. There is no way the father can actually share such a monumental and agonizing experience, he asserted, unless the man was one, passing a bowling ball; two, circumcising himself with a chainsaw; or three, opening an umbrella up his ass. The women in the audience literally cheered when Robin finished this routine.
From labor he moved on to the actual birth, describing newborns as looking like a little old man dipped in forty weight, or as if Gandhi and Churchill had a child. He did another penis joke (he thought his son’s umbilical cord was his penis) and then began a discussion of baby ca-ca, a green substance (“What do you feed him? Algae!?”) he described as being “part toxic waste and part Velcro.”
After infancy comes childhood and Robin shared with the audience the experiences he had had with his son Zachary during this period as well. He recounted a funny conversation:
ZACHARY: Why is the sky blue?
ROBIN: Well, because of the atmosphere.
ZACHARY: Why is there atmosphere?
ROBIN: Because we need to breathe.
ZACHARY: Why do we breathe?
ROBIN: WHY THE FUCK DO YOU WANT TO KNOW? A YEAR AGO YOU WERE SITTING IN YOUR OWN SHIT, NOW YOU’RE CARL SAGAN??
Robin also talked about his son imitating his outbursts (he’d hear “Fuck it!” from the baby seat in the back seat of the car while driving); leaving his child with a babysitter (“Let’s peel off these Pampers and party! You like Fisher-Price music?”); and he admitted that in sixteen years or so, he knew that his son would come up to him and say, “God, dad. You’re fucked.” (And behind Zachary would be Robin’s own dad, gleefully going, “YES!”)
Winding up, Robin concluded his Evening at the Met with a moving dialogue between him and his infant son that brought him right back to one of his first jokes of the evening:
ZACHARY: Well, what’s it gonna be?
ROBIN: I don’t know, but maybe along the way, you’ll take my hand, tell a few jokes, and have some fun. Hey, how do you get to the Met?
ZACHARY: Money.
ROBIN: Hey, you’re not afraid, are you?
ZACHARY: No. Fuck it.
Robin then walked off the stage in character as his little son Zachary holding his daddy’s hand.
Robin received a thunderous standing ovation and returned to perform the aforementioned original a capella song. “Opera Rap,” which included the following lyrics:
Say aria, aria, you’re my man
If he can’t do, Wagner can!
Say Wagner, Verdi, Puccini, too
Come on everybody
Do what you can do!
Say opera rap, opera rap
Thus, Robin Williams concluded his triumphant Evening at the Met.
©1997 Stephen Spignesi. All rights reserved. Used by permission.
The people at the Met are going, “You ain’t comin’ back, I’ll tell you that right now. You ain’t comin’ back after what you did!” But we did it! Ha, ha, ha!
- Robin Williams, at the conclusion of his performance at the Met
This August 1986 concert performance at the Metropolitan Opera House in New York City -- the first ever by a solo comic -- is probably the quintessential and defining Robin Williams “live” performance. (Robin, who was thirty-four at the time, performed two shows -- one on Saturday, August 9th, and one on Sunday, August 10th, both at 8:30 p.m.).
Robin’s performance is meticulously structured and extremely polished and it is obvious that at this point in his career, he was a consummate stand-up performer with flawless timing and brilliant material. There were no props, other than a few set decorations belonging to the Met that Robin ad-libbed a couple of gags off of, and the only musical number was Robin’s a capella “Opera Rap,” which he wrote especially for his appearance here and performed during his encore.
This concert (which was originally broadcast as an HBO special presentation) begins with the viewer being ushered out of their home, into a limousine, and driven to the Met, all to the accompanying strains of Mozart.
Inside the Met, just before the show begins, the voice of Robin Williams suddenly booms out over the audience:
Ladies and gentlemen, may I have your attention, please? There will be a minor change in the program tonight. The part of Robin Williams will be played by The Temptations.
Robin is then introduced and bounds onstage to a huge ovation, wearing black satin pants, a blue Hawaiian short, and red shoes. His first joke (after the improvised ballet steps he did as he came on stage) was, “Howdeeee! . . . Oops, wrong opera house!” The magnificent chandeliers were still rising up to ceiling as they do before all performances at the Met and Robin then cracked a joke in which he thanked Imelda Marcos for the use of her earrings.
After rhetorically asking, “What the fuck am I doing here?”, he then posed the traditional question, “How do you get to the Met?,” but instead of the traditional answer (“Practice”), Robin supplied the eighties answer: “Money!”
He then did a brief but hilarious bit in which he wondered aloud if Pavarotti was over at the Improv, going, “Two Jews walk into a bar,” (in a requisite Italian accent, of course). He then expanded this gag by imitating renowned tenor Placido Domingo doing The Music Man.
All of this hilarity took place within the first few seconds of Robin taking the Met’s stage and from there, it only got better. Robin obviously prepared carefully for this performance and we get the sense that he did not leave too much room for freewheeling improvisation (as he clearly did for his 1982 San Francisco concert in which he wandered through the audience for minutes at a time, goofing on people left and right).
Here are the highlights of Robin’s rare appearance at that most august of American performance venues, the Metropolitan Opera House.
After admitting that he was “scared shitless,” Robin’s first topics for this concert included Prince Charles, Southerners, Abraham Lincoln, Leave It To Beaver, Robin Leach, and ballet. (During his riff on ballet, he again used his all-time favorite joke, stating, “Ballet is men wearing pants so tight you can tell what religion they are.” [See the feature on this joke.])
Robin then did a lengthy routine on his drinking days. He told the audience he had to stop drinking alcohol because he used to wake up nude on the hood of his car with his keys in his ass. Topics for this bit also included wine with screw caps and hangovers.
After talking about booze, Robin then moved to the subjects of marijuana and cocaine, talking about paranoia, driving while stoned, freebasing (“It’s not free! It costs you your house!”), and thoughtfully providing a three-part test to determine if you have a cocaine problem:
“1. If you come to your house, you have no furniture, and your cat’s going, ‘I’m outta here, prick!’ -- Warning!
“2. If you have this dream where you’re doing cocaine in your sleep and you can’t fall asleep, and you’re doing cocaine in your sleep and you can’t fall asleep, and you wake up and you’re doing cocaine -- Bingo!
“3. If on your tax form it says $50,000 for snacks -- Mayday!”
Moving on, Robin then talked about football players on steroids, golf, marathon runners, yuppies, Japanese people, Hollywood cops (“Stop! Those shoes don’t go with that bag!”), New York cops, Southern cops (“They wear sunglasses with the mirrors on the inside”), and Southern justice.
While speaking of the South, Robin came up with this hilarious observation (which got a huge laugh): “Isn’t it strange to think that if you commit sodomy in Georgia, they’re gonna put you in a cell with another man who’s gonna sodomize you? That’s Southern logic!”
From here, Robin tackled gun control, armor-piercing bullets, Pearl Harbor, and Ronald Reagan. While talking about Reagan, Robin did a hilarious routine in which he imagined politicians as actors in one giant, real-life movie. He did impeccable imitations of John Wayne as Tip O’Neill; Bela Lugosi as Casper Weinberger; Laurel and Hardy as George Bush and George Schulz; The Phantom of the Opera as Teddy Kennedy; and Obi Wan Kenobi and Princess Leia as Ronald and Nancy Reagan. He also mused that political summit meetings between world leaders should be held at Carmine’s Clam Bar in the Bronx with a guy named Vinnie moderating. He also said that the truth about Reagan is that he was really Richard Nixon wearing a Ronald Reagan mask.
Interestingly, Robin then made one of his exceedingly rare pop culture errors. While imitating Nixon pulling off his Reagan mask, he said, “It’s Halloween Part 5 -- Jason’s back and he’s pissed off!” As all devoted horror fans know, however, Jason was the bad guy in the Friday the 13th series. Michael Myers was the boogeyman in the Halloween series.
Around the time of this concert, Richard Nixon had been on the cover of Newsweek. Robin’s spin on that? “Richard Nixon on the cover of Newsweek is like John Hinckley on the cover of Guns & Ammo.”
Robin then tackled the Middle East, South Africa, George Wallace, Lester Maddox, Prime Minister Botha, alleged former Nazi Kurt Waldheim, and the United Nations.
Next in the crosshairs were TV evangelists, pollution, Chernobyl, and spring fever, which led Robin to a lengthy (sorry) discussion of his penis. From here he moved to the idea of a woman as President (“There would never be any wars. Just every twenty-eight days some intense negotiations”), menstruation, and the fantasy of Miss Right (“Or at least Miss Right Now.”)
Robin then let loose with a hilarious one-liner about sex therapist Dr. Ruth: “Here’s a woman talking about oral sex and you know she doesn’t even eat pork.” He followed this with a lengthy and very funny routine about a black woman sex therapist named Dr. Roof, a non-nonsense sister who told men exactly where it was at and what they did wrong making love. Taking on the persona of the good doctor, Robin discussed oral sex, foreplay, and condoms, which led him to his longest routine of the evening, a funny and touching segment on pregnancy, labor, childbirth, and parenthood.
In a truly clever and inventive routine, Robin talked about the Chromosome Square Dance, the Titty Fairy, the Hormone Fairy, and then explained what he called “Sharing the Birth Experience,” the current fashionable attempt to involve the father in the birth process.
This is absolutely not possible, Robin declared. There is no way the father can actually share such a monumental and agonizing experience, he asserted, unless the man was one, passing a bowling ball; two, circumcising himself with a chainsaw; or three, opening an umbrella up his ass. The women in the audience literally cheered when Robin finished this routine.
From labor he moved on to the actual birth, describing newborns as looking like a little old man dipped in forty weight, or as if Gandhi and Churchill had a child. He did another penis joke (he thought his son’s umbilical cord was his penis) and then began a discussion of baby ca-ca, a green substance (“What do you feed him? Algae!?”) he described as being “part toxic waste and part Velcro.”
After infancy comes childhood and Robin shared with the audience the experiences he had had with his son Zachary during this period as well. He recounted a funny conversation:
ZACHARY: Why is the sky blue?
ROBIN: Well, because of the atmosphere.
ZACHARY: Why is there atmosphere?
ROBIN: Because we need to breathe.
ZACHARY: Why do we breathe?
ROBIN: WHY THE FUCK DO YOU WANT TO KNOW? A YEAR AGO YOU WERE SITTING IN YOUR OWN SHIT, NOW YOU’RE CARL SAGAN??
Robin also talked about his son imitating his outbursts (he’d hear “Fuck it!” from the baby seat in the back seat of the car while driving); leaving his child with a babysitter (“Let’s peel off these Pampers and party! You like Fisher-Price music?”); and he admitted that in sixteen years or so, he knew that his son would come up to him and say, “God, dad. You’re fucked.” (And behind Zachary would be Robin’s own dad, gleefully going, “YES!”)
Winding up, Robin concluded his Evening at the Met with a moving dialogue between him and his infant son that brought him right back to one of his first jokes of the evening:
ZACHARY: Well, what’s it gonna be?
ROBIN: I don’t know, but maybe along the way, you’ll take my hand, tell a few jokes, and have some fun. Hey, how do you get to the Met?
ZACHARY: Money.
ROBIN: Hey, you’re not afraid, are you?
ZACHARY: No. Fuck it.
Robin then walked off the stage in character as his little son Zachary holding his daddy’s hand.
Robin received a thunderous standing ovation and returned to perform the aforementioned original a capella song. “Opera Rap,” which included the following lyrics:
Say aria, aria, you’re my man
If he can’t do, Wagner can!
Say Wagner, Verdi, Puccini, too
Come on everybody
Do what you can do!
Say opera rap, opera rap
Thus, Robin Williams concluded his triumphant Evening at the Met.
©1997 Stephen Spignesi. All rights reserved. Used by permission.