Bernhard Revamps Her Breakout Act

By Alex Baldinger
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, September 5, 2008

Whether making enough wardrobe changes on-screen to clothe a small nation or, as a cosmetics pitch woman, asking provocatively, "Can you handle these lips?," Sandra Bernhard is by most accounts a bit of a diva.

So when her phone rang during an interview from her home in New York, she obviously took the call. "Sleepovers," Bernhard says sheepishly: It was her 10-year-old daughter, Cicely. "She had to check in, as she does quite often."

The warm maternalism of the exchange would seem uncharacteristic to anyone familiar with Bernhard's caustic and revered one-woman act, "Without You I'm Nothing," which she will reintroduce at Theater J starting Tuesday, 20 years after the show debuted off-Broadway. Since then, the 53-year-old Bernhard says, she has steadily evolved, with motherhood as the catalyst.

"Twenty years ago, it wasn't even in my realm of possibility that I was going to have a kid," she says. "And then suddenly, I woke up one day and said, 'If I don't do this, it's something I'm really going to regret.' "

At Theater J, audiences will see Bernhard performing in the pared-down style that helped launch her to prominence in 1988: There will be no wild costume changes and set pieces that were added to the critically acclaimed film version of "Without You I'm Nothing," released two years later.

The virtually uncategorizable film provides a window into the mind of Bernhard (who cracked Comedy Central's all-time list of the 100 best stand-up comedians at No. 97): Imagine a comic performing monologues with a slam poet's cadence, casually interspersing bits of Hebrew and covers of "Ain't No Mountain High Enough," discussing topics from her childhood in Flint, Mich., to the commonalities between activist poet Amiri Baraka and Lech Walesa before delivering the coup de grace: a striptease (think American flag tassels and you're almost there) set to Prince's "Little Red Corvette."

With more seasoning as a performer, Bernhard says, she doesn't feel the need to rely on the film's visual elements to make her act stand up under the lights. "Inherently I'm a little more glamorous than I was 20 years ago," she says. "On a physical level I understand myself better. On that level it'll be glamorous. I wish I could pull off all those costume changes."

Some of the subject matter from the original show has changed as well. Jokes about Gary Hart don't go over so well with younger audiences, Bernhard reckons, so changes have been made to reflect today's talking points, especially on the political front.

"And then I'll probably be doing a little piece that bridges everything together and talks about the '80s," she says, "so it's not exactly the way that it was when I did it off-Broadway 20 years ago, because I would lose my mind."

Spending three weeks in Washington will afford Bernhard the chance to renew her seminal act before kicking off a larger tour with the new material. She says she thinks the updated material, coupled with the old, will resonate with younger audiences who know her as an in-your-face, spare-no-one voice on the stand-up circuit.

"Now I have my audience that comes to see me. I don't feel like I need to beat people over the head," Bernhard says. "All great artists ... younger people didn't stop coming to see those people. There was a continuum. I don't feel like I speak to one generation. I feel like it just kind of bridges the gap. It just goes on and on. It's not like I'm trying to be cool and young -- I just am."

On the subject of politics, Bernhard is particularly loquacious. In 2006, she had a well-publicized dust-up with Elizabeth Hasselbeck on "The View" over Bernhard's unflattering comments about first lady Laura Bush. With a presidential election looming, Bernhard is eager to contribute her voice to the discussion in Washington. "Needless to say, I think it's time to switch parties and have a party," she says. "I'm sure that the D.C. crowds will be responsive and really connect with it. So I'm excited about that; I can get it back into its groove."