Bill Cosby charms a full house at MCA

When comedian Bill Cosby sat in a luxury chair provided for his performance Saturday at the Maine Center for the Arts gala opening, he immediately sank into its deep folds. “This chair is not good for old people,” he said, his mouth turned down in a signature scowl. Then the 68-year-old TV icon smiled and did what can only be called the Bill Cosby head wiggle. There’s a bag where there used to be a six-pack, he said patting his rounded stomach: “You learn to accept it.”

The full-house audience, which had leapt to its feet and cheered as soon as Cosby appeared, broke into laughter. And they remained laughing until the end of the show, 90 minutes later, when the audience again was on its feet, this time sated, entertained and brought into the special magic that can happen in the halls of a performing arts center.

For Cosby, the magic is that he uses humor to bridge the gaps between young and old, black and white, male and female, parent and child. He doesn’t rely on comic routines as much as he culls insights from his life as a performer, a son, sibling, husband, parent, grandparent and American. In this way, he has less in common with his edgy peers – say, Richard Pryor and Robin Williams, both of whom have been his co-stars – than with Mark Twain and Johnny Carson. Like Twain, he is a commentator on the foibles of living; like Carson, he is the master of gesture and nuance.

It’s no wonder that there was a glow over the MCA, which sold out two shows, as well as more than 300 tickets to a reception and more than 200 seats to a black-tie dinner in a tent that could have housed a small circus. Two video screens hanging above the stage gave the hall the feel of an arena, but there was no mistaking the two performances as anything other than the type of cultural event that reaches to arts and sports audiences alike.

The late afternoon show drew an informal crowd, many of them dressed in jeans and sneakers. The evening performance, however, was distinctly formal, with many women in gowns and men in tuxedos. Cosby wore a UM T-shirt, white athletic pants and Birkenstocks. He joked about having met UM President Robert Kennedy backstage. “He had on a tuxedo,” Cosby said, then paused to look down at his own casual attire. “I felt very bad for him.” Much laughter followed.

Indeed, President Kennedy had earlier appeared onstage with John Patches, MCA executive director, and Mel Braverman, chairman of the MCA board, to thank sponsors and to announce the winner of the 2005 Wilma Bradford Award for Achievement in the Arts. The award recognizes outstanding service to the arts in the region, as well as to particular service to the MCA. Braverman explained the award but had no idea that he would be this year’s recipient. “This building and everything that takes place in it is very precious,” said Braverman, a tireless activist in the local arts scene. He encouraged others to appreciate the importance of a performing arts center to the cultural life of a community.

The community, indeed, was the focus of much of Cosby’s humor. He did a riff on the UM black bear mascot. The black bear, he said, is “the bear of my people,” and he lifted his hand to gently tap his heart. “You people don’t have a bear,” he said to the primarily white audience. Someone called out: “Polar bear?” No, Cosby said, “The polar bear is for Polish people.”

Cosby remained seated through much of his conversational presentation. A “Hello Friend” T-shirt draped across the back of his chair paid tribute to his late son Ennis and the foundation that Cosby and his wife, Camille, established to continue the educational goals of their son. Cosby stuck to his humor, however. Sometimes he poked fun at members of the audience, sometimes at his family, at women, at men and often at himself. In a bit about Adam and Eve, Cosby said: “God threw them out of the garden because God was a single parent. A male single parent … If God [had] had a wife, she would have said ‘Where are the children? … Go get them … Who do you think you are anyway?'”

He also told the story of the day his wife told their then 12-year-old daughter to take the bathroom scale into her bedroom. Mrs. Cosby then had the girl pick up a dirty sock on the floor and put it on the scale. “How much does that weigh?” Cosby recounted his wife asking. “The needle hardly moved,” he said was the girl’s reply. “Then why can’t you pick that up?” Mrs. Cosby said.

For some, Cosby’s storytelling may have been an echo of a less politically correct era, when parents spanked their children, mothers stayed home, fathers were disciplinarians and candied yams didn’t have marshmallows. Cosby is a masterful commentator, and his craft always stops short of being mean-spirited or narrow-minded. He deftly included the college student as well as the mill worker or CEO in the audience, and the breadth of that appeal is testament to his material and delivery. The MCA could not have picked a friendlier, more talented artist to inaugurate its season.