Houston crowds are tough, and plenty of musicians, standup comics and other entertainers hate coming here.
In between satirical songs and sarcastic jabs at pop culture, Bo Burnham read a few haikus on Thursday night to a packed house at Numbers Nightclub. At one point, he turned the open pages toward the crowd, showing them to be blank. | Kendra Berglund/The Daily Cougar
If you know this, it should come as no surprise that during Bo Burnham’s show, one member of the audience felt it was her right to heckle the young comedian incessantly. Burnham quickly shut her up, and each time she came back for more, he proved his wit quicker, his tongue mightier and his microphone louder than her voice. Eventually, he asked security to escort her out.
It all started with (what I’d like to think was) a big misunderstanding. A few skits into the show, a woman approached Burnham with a clear plastic cup, left it onstage and informed Burnham that it was for him. The 20-year-old reached down, picked it up, took a whiff and then said, “Uhhh… would someone please call the cops?”
The crowd laughed, and Burnham put down the beverage. It could have been left at that, but the soon-to-be heckler wouldn’t be denied that easily.
“It’s club soda,” she yelled from her seat in the back. Burnham, who had returned to his piano at this point, continued on with the intention of brushing the incident off.
In a few of his songs, Burnham has openly expressed his distaste for alcohol. On top of that, he’s enrolled at New York University’s Tisch School of Arts; put simply, the kid has a lot to lose.
Halfway through a skit later in the show, the same woman sounded off again.
“I know you paid 30 bucks to see me, but the key words there are, ‘see me,’” Burnham responded as the crowd burst into laughs. “Go ahead and call your dad and work out those emotional issues.”
Luckily, the woman stayed silent for the last bit of the show, and the night wasn’t completely ruined by one attention-starved individual.
Burnham’s show, as a whole, was entertaining in spite of itself. Those who went to hear his new material heard a lot of old material (and vice versa), and those who went to hear satirical music ended up listening to a lot of traditional standup comedy. It wasn’t a conventional show, but that’s fitting for an artist like Burnham whose rise to fame has been anything but.
His content is bold in nature too, so trying new things and succeeding is nothing new to the young, up and coming comedian.
