Notorious C.H.O. is Margaret Cho’s very bawdy vagina monologue. The fabulously embittered fag hag calls the only gay bar in Scotland (named C.C. Bloom, after Bette Midler’s Beaches character) “the gayest thing ever”; she says it should have been called “Fuck Me In The Ass” right before segueing into tales about her anus and G-Spot. The fag-haggery works this time around because Notorious C.H.O. never feels like a collection of raging anecdotes championing equal equality. Cho pokes her way through every orifice of her body; she emerges weary and bloodied, taking aim at our discomfort with our physicality. She gives due props to the deceased drag queen friends who taught her perseverance but not before taking aim at their grotesque, feces-as-chocolate-sprinkles performance at a San Francisco Haagen-Dazs. Despite the gratuitous we-shall-overcome asides, the cum-to-cheese ratio noticeably favors the body’s natural fluids. Lorene Machado’s direction tragically ignores Cho’s audience though the constant focus on Cho’s robust frame compliments the comedienne’s notion that if a man is fucking her then he shouldn’t be criticizing her body. Kudos to Cho for getting past the showbiz-made-a-fool-of-me rage of I’m the One That Want. Oh, and she can still make you laugh ‘til your cheeks hurt.
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