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Brick Wall Comedy
Brick Wall Comedy

Wicker Chairs and Gravity

Steven Wright

HBO · 1990 · 60 min

Monotone observations and surreal logic from a notoriously low-energy comic.

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Steven Wright opens his second HBO hour not by walking to a mic, but by emerging from a surreal nap. A short film intro tracks his impossibly long beard winding through a forest until it connects to another version of himself, complete with a flying dog, before depositing him on stage [3.2.9]. From there, it is straight into the low-heart-rate absurdism that made his name. The pacing is deliberate, the delivery monotone, and the logic sideways. He spends the set pitching concepts like elevator practice, snake mirrors, and a story about unraveling a stolen wicker chair to fit it through a keyhole.

Filmed at the Winter Garden Theatre in Toronto and broadcast in September 1990, Wicker Chairs and Gravity caught Wright during an unusual career peak [2.2.3]. The previous year, he won an Academy Award for a live-action short film [2.2.3]. Despite the hardware, his stage work here remains aggressively unadorned, offering a quiet counterpoint to the louder comedy of the era. The hour functions less as a structured narrative and more as an arbitrary sequence of passing thoughts, strung together by a comic who treats the microphone like a ledger for his weirdest dreams.

The set list

5 bits

  1. Rip Van Winkle short film sequence

    Opening and closing short film segments featuring Bergman-esque abstraction, falling watch numbers, and a dog with angel wings.

  2. Peripheral visionary

    Explains being a peripheral visionary who can see into the future, but only way off to the side.

  3. Body tattoo

    Contemplating getting a tattoo covering his whole body that depicts himself, but taller.

  4. Shooting a mime

    Ponders whether one should use a silencer when shooting a mime.

  5. Meeting a stranger

    Asks whether if you didn't know him, you would think he was a stranger.

How it plays

Tone
Surreal, bizarre, wry, existential, and absurd.
On stage
Extreme deadpan, lethargic, flat affect, slow monotone delivery resembling a rambling eccentric dialed down to apathetic slow motion.
Pace
Expertly timed slovenly comedic metronome; a relentless stream of consciousness with virtually no transitions between one-liners, building cumulative momentum through escalating aimlessness.
About
everyday anxieties, absurdity of existence, quirks of language, philosophical musings

What the critics said

Praised by reviewers as a surreal, sharp, and hilarious showcase of rapid-fire non-sequiturs and expertly controlled deadpan timing.

In the room: Kept fully engaged and consistently laughing throughout the hour despite the non-conversational, highly eccentric rhythm.

Summed up from reviews, articles and listings. Sources: themoviedb.org, imdb.com, screensearch.co.uk, actoragecheck.com, letterboxd.com, jammersreviews.com, en.wikipedia.org, allmusic.com, cracked.com.

Backstory

His second solo HBO stand-up special, marking what would become his last televised stand-up special for roughly 16 years until 2006.

Details

Released
Taped
Winter Garden Theatre, Toronto
Runtime
60 min
Where
HBO
Director
Walter C. Miller, Dean Parisot
Topics

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