By Hannah Crooks
With a line stretching down the sidewalk and around the corner of the bar, frenzied fans of comedian Michelle Wolf crowded her sold out show at The Mill the evening of April 8, anxious to hear the New York-based comedian.
Wolf is well-known for her appearances on “The Daily Show,” where she covers a variety of political topics, including women’s rights and, of course, Donald Trump.
Simultaneously testing the waters and relating to the crowd on a local level, Wolf opened with with a joke detailing a conversation she had overheard in the Kum & Go down the street. The bit including Trump’s recent military attack on Syria and the Pepsi ad featuring Kendall Jenner — both highly controversial issues in the media, as of late — was executed impeccably and immediately had the audience in fits of laughter, not two minutes into the show.
The appearance of Wolf’s wild, red curls and self-described shrill voice added to her comedic presence, especially as she much of her material focuses on women’s lives and her personal experiences.
Many of these jokes hit home with the women in the audience, prompting cheers of agreement and plenty of “mmmhms.”
One popular moment in particular, Wolf compared the ease at which men can obtain medications for erectile dysfunction with the increasing attack on access to birth control for women. She gave the clever analogy, “That’s like saying, ‘Let’s have a duel, but only one of us gets a gun. And on average that gun shoots 20 million bullets.’ And we’re just asking for a shield.”
The comic also garnered big laughs from the crowd when she critiqued gun control laws, or lack thereof, admitting, “The other day, I walked right into a glass door. There was an oily imprint of my face on the door. And I can buy a gun.”
Though the main theme throughout the night settled around what it is like to be a woman in America, Wolf did touch on other topics. Most of these, such as immigrant jobs and the environment, still allowed her political ideologies to shine through. Others, like her judgments of people she observes at the gym, were purely entertaining.
Seamlessly tying together her set, Wolf ended the show reading a text conversation that took place between her and a personal trainer she suffered through a bad date with. The punchline, which is too good to give away — you’ll just have to see her show yourself — perfectly displayed the inner workings of the modern dating world, and had members of the audience on their feet in applause.