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The DVD/CD combo Red, White and Brown  was recorded by Indian-Canadian stand-up comedian Peters to a sold-out crowd at the WaMu Theater at Madison Square Garden. Russell Peters, who is set to star in his own show on Comedy Central, is one of the rising stars of stand-up comedy.Russell Peters claims he owes his comedic material to growing up brown surrounded by white people in Canada. Peters's stand-up routine consists of lobbing zingers about various ethnicities and groups whose accents and mannerisms he captures to flawless and hilarious effect. Indeed, he claims the punch line to many of his jokes is the Indian accent. No group is excluded from being skewered. The routine here features Asians obsessed with Dance, Dance, Revolution and fake Louis Vuitton, cheap Indians who invented the number zero (because it represents the amount they like to pay), macho Italian-Americans who act more Italian than native Italians, Guyanese and Trinidadian Indians whose forefathers were clearly not fast runners (after all, they allowed themselves to be captured by slavers). He states mock-grimly that he doesn't do Arab jokes because he doesn't "want to die." But Peters manages to weave wry social commentary into his lighthearted, equal-opportunity roasting of all ethnic and social groups. He notes that on Western TV, they only show crazy, redneck Arabs yelling "la la la" at some street protest, because of course seeing Arabs doing normal human things - drinking coffee and visiting family - would be boring. No topic is too taboo for Peters. He's happy to share details about his penis size and pubic hair grooming with an audience that includes his mother, no less. Toward the end of the routine, his sketch on deaf people (and the various ethnic stereotypes embedded in sign language) elicits gasps and signs of discomfort even from a multi-ethnic audience that has been right there with him through an hour of graphic and edgy racial, sexual and scatological humor. Much like stand-up comedians such as Chris Rock, Peters is able to go where no white comedian could go by virtue of being "ethnic" himself. But Russell Peters's slightly goofy face and mannerisms (he is constantly cracking himself up with his own routine, for instance) and good-natured jokes about himself all serve to cue the audience that the man means no harm. And yes, he even has them rolling in the aisles during the deaf sketch by the end. This combo DVD/CD set features the extended, 78-minute version of the recording (with 20 minutes more than the original) as well as deleted scenes with commentary. A good buy. |
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