Review: LEA DELARIA OUT RAGE at The Chan National Queer Arts Center

Lea DeLaria – Out Rage

The Chan National Queer Arts Center

January 18, 2025, 6pm, 8:30 pm

The name Lea DeLaria holds some cache here in San Francisco for LGBTQ locals of a certain age. She was a forerunner of lesbian standup back in the early 80’s, the first openly gay comic on TV and a staple of early gay comedy clubs like the iconic Valencia Rose. The self-titled ‘big fat fuckin dyke’ was all punk vulgar rage but exciting and in-your-face confrontation. She added in music to temper the anger and she’s been performing that same shtick ever since- raunch commentary, song, repeat. From the near sold-out performances, the crowd ate it up.

Backed by a stellar jazz trio of Chris Crasso on piano, Marco Panascia on bass and Shirazette Tinnin on drums, Delaria opened with an old Betty Hutton tune “Murder, He Says” (Frank Loesser / Jimmy McHugh) followed by a rowdy “Here Come the Lesbians.” She riffed on important moments from 2024; the Olympics and Wicked to name a couple, then hit paydirt with an audience participation song maybe titled “Donald Trump is a Big Fat Bitch?”

There wasn’t any joke telling, Delaria is not that kind of comic, rather relying on self-referential events (her recent hysterectomy). From her 2015 CD House of David, Delaria performed jazzed up versions of “Let’s Dance” and the futuristic “Starman’, The latter, Bowie’s second space-age novelty hit, does not lend itself to a jazz re-interpretation, however bold or novel. From her role as Hildy in a 1998 revival of On the Town she sang “I Can Cook Too”. She’s had enormous success on both television and the stage and is about to join the cast of off-Broadway’s smash hit Titanique. The show concluded with a touching cover of Gilbert O’Sullivan’s 1972 smash “Alone Again, (Naturally)”, then a jazzed-up version of Stephen Sondheim’s “The Ballad of Sweeney Todd”.

Photo credit: Tina Turnbow