COMEDY REVIEW : Kathleen Madigan: Heartlanding on Her Feet

There’s a distinct Midwestern motif running through Kathleen Madigan’s stand-up routine, which lights often on such heartland topics as cows, bowling and hunting.

Her St. Louis upbringing seems to have influenced more than her material, however. The strongest comic attribute Madigan displayed Tuesday at the Irvine Improv is a no-nonsense, almost deadpan flair to both her delivery and her writing, a flair that feels untouched by the coastal neuroses.

The gravelly, just-got-out-of-bed voice and sardonic world view are initially surprising coming from this petite 27-year-old, but by the end of the set they feel just right.

An example is Madigan’s take on smoking, a vice she admits to indulging in while neither apologizing for the fact nor glossing over the habit’s, er, drawbacks.

She laughs at a cigarette promotion--her brand--offering discounts to customers on outdoor gear. “How many hikers do you know who smoke?” she asked. “Last week I was out on a date and I coughed up a complimentary Marlboro T-shirt.”

She also scoffs at other smokers who tell her about relatives or acquaintances who smoke and drank, only to die of something unrelated--for example, her father telling her about an uncle who got hit by a bus. “Dad,” she replied, “He was drunk, in the middle of a highway, chasing his lighter.”

Playing with the Midwestern stereotypes, Madigan admits to a bit of nocturnal cow-tipping in her day, but excuses it on the grounds that cows are too stupid to know what happened (“Catch a boat to India--that’s where the smart cows are,” she said, in a string of insults to bovine intelligence).

She pokes fun at the fact that her hometown houses the National Bowling Hall of Fame--then concedes that she bowled for two years in college.

“I was drunk and needed shoes,” she explained. “I’ll give bowlers credit,” Madigan added later. “I think they’re steroid-free.”

In a brief bit on the Waco cult disaster, she wondered how the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms became a single agency. “That’s not a group,” she said. “That’s my dad’s bowling team.”

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Madigan, a relative newcomer to comedy, has shown strong growth in the past few years in her material and stage skills. She rarely provokes guffaws, but her routine is consistently funny, and she is low-key and engaging.

Female comics are still a relative rarity in the club rank and file. Unlike many, Madigan doesn’t feel compelled to dwell on gender politics, other than the occasional aside on what she characterizes as an unfruitful dating life.

She does, however, admit to thinking about motherhood now and then.

“I get those maternal feelings,” she said, “like when I’m lying down on the couch and I can’t reach the remote control.”

* Kathleen Madigan and Rocky LaPorte continue through Saturday at the Improv, 4255 Campus Drive, Irvine. Show time today: 8:30 p.m. $7. (714) 854-5455.