Black on Broadway

Lewis Black spent decades working theater gigs and performing short segments on The Daily Show before securing his first solo HBO hour. Filmed at the Brooks Atkinson Theatre in New York City, Black on Broadway captures the comic at the peak of his early-2000s righteous indignation, pacing the stage and shaking his finger at a post-9/11 America.\n\nRather than relying on tidy set-ups and punchlines, Black treats the performance as a pressure-valve release. He targets the George W. Bush administration’s search for weapons of mass destruction, suggesting the government should have just sent two kids to Kinko’s to fabricate a photo of a nuclear weapon on a camel rather than letting the public down by stopping their usual lies. He also directs his anger toward corporate greed, Homeland Security’s color-coded threat charts, and the absurdity of using duct tape as a counter-terrorism measure.\n\nBetween the political rants, the set detours into petty, everyday frustrations. Black delivers an extended sequence on the marketing of bottled water—which he claims is just packaged by a couple in a Pittsburgh bathtub—and the concept of soy milk, arguing that since there is no such thing as a soy titty, the drink is actually just soy juice. He also laments the isolation of New Zealand, suggesting the country push its islands closer to the rest of the world if they want to participate in global society.