The Marlowsphere (Blog #166)

“Dying is easy, comedy is hard.”

This famous line is most commonly attributed to the character actor Edmund Gwenn, best known for his role as Santa Claus in the evergreen classic film Miracle on 34th Street. According to accounts, on his deathbed, a visitor commented on the difficulty of his situation, and Gwenn replied, “Not nearly as difficult as playing comedy.”

This line was brought to mind by last night’s (August 5, 2025) offering at the Public Theatre’s Joe’s Pub, namely, comedienne Maria DeCotis’s 90-minute set “Emotionally Unreasonable.”

Maria DeCotis is a NYC based comedian, actress, and writer from Georgia where she famously Christmas caroled for Big Boi at age 12. She graduated with a BFA in Acting, Cum Laude from Boston University with a concentration in Playwriting and studied Commedia dell’Arte at the Accademia dell’Arte in Italy.

There’s no doubt this is a talented young woman. She can act, she can sing (she has a big Broadway show voice), she can write. Her stage presence belies her 5’1” frame. And it takes more than courage to get up in front of a crowd of strangers to perform.

In the main, though, much of her set was not so much stand-up comedy as it was mini-play after mini-play. The question is: Did her “comedy” intend to bring an uplifting, distraction from the outside world’s problems and laughter to an audience?

For this journalist, it did not.

The 182-seat Joe’s Pub was at best 80% filled with mostly women with a broad age range. Ms. DeCotis asked if there were married couples in the audience. Few responded. Those over 30 and especially those over 50 (men and women) smiled from time-to-time, but they were not laughing.

Comedienne Maria DeCotis

On Joe’s Pub website, the program was billed as “. . . stand up and musical comedy about her experience as a professional wedding officiant,” however, this was a scant portion of her act and not even used as a common thread throughout.

There were glimmers of originality, perhaps a half dozen, in her act, but in the main the material drew from low hanging, familiar fruit content, as in any time you hear a comedian use such words as “bitch,” or “shit,” or refer to male and female excretions, such as female menstruation or male “jizz,” or mention masturbation and blowjobs, this is an immediate sign of a lack of original material. It’s been done. Worse, much of her material, as it unfolded, was anti-male, anti-marriage, and anti-compassionate.

This said, if you listened carefully, there was much comedic content in her writing, but her loud, raucous, self-conscious, trying too hard, overdone delivery masked what could have been a masterful and moving presentation. In terms of structure, there was no arc to her act.

And then it got worse. While advertised as a 75-minute set, at some point around this time mark Ms. DeCotis asked the audience if they wanted to leave?  It was delivered in such a way one could not tell if she meant it or if it was part of the act. Did she want to leave the stage?

And then it got even darker. She delved further into her failed, abusive marriage to an Italian man she met in Venice. At that point this journalist wondered if her set was about difficult, universal truths through comedy or her own need for catharsis through talk therapy on stage with about 140 people watching and listening.

Vanilla & Chocolate soft-serve ice cream swirl with chocolate candies. Delicious!

Again, Ms. DeCotis is clearly a multi-level talent, but regardless of all the famous people who have championed her, on this particular night she was a work in progress. For a good portion of the audience, it was “emotionally unreasonable.” For an esteemed venue such as Joe’s Pub to mount such an evening, it was a disappointment.

On the other hand, the dessert was excellent.

Eugene Marlow, Ph.D.  © 2025