In “The Domino Effect,” a genre-defying autobiographical epic on YouTube, the comic Ali Siddiq begins one part by casually asking the audience a question: “Has anyone here been duct-taped and thrown in a trunk?”
Then he goes back in time to explain how he got there. This feels like the start of a prestige crime drama, and his riveting project, spanning more than six hours and four chapters and completed last month, resembles a solo version of “The Wire” more than any stand-up special. With cheerful charisma, Siddiq, 50, describes entering the drug trade as a boy, being shuttled through the justice system and spending six years behind bars. In between comic scenes and farcical act-outs, there are gun battles, a prison riot, drug deals gone wrong.
Great personal storytelling relies on pacing and structure, but there’s also something to be said for living an interesting life. Siddiq has, yet he also never loses sight of the goal of getting laughs, even when he’s trapped in the trunk of his own car — where his first thought is anger at himself for sloppily putting the tire in there. This is nervy humor, violence always looming. In stand-up, you wait for the punchline. Here, it’s the punch.
After many years of telling jokes, Siddiq, who lives in Houston, broke through with “The Domino Effect.” It’s the kind of eccentric, messy project that could be made only in our age of self-produced specials. In a crowded field of them, it stood out, with Part 1 racking up 13 million views.
At the Beacon Theater in New York this year, the sold-out crowd stood and roared when he strolled onstage and sat down as relaxed as a suburban dad ready to settle in front of the television after a long week. This studied ordinary-guy casualness has become a trademark. He always begins shows with an offhand “Hey.” Describing the criminal world in white-collar workplace jargon is part of his humor. Siddiq doesn’t like to say he went to prison because he was a drug dealer. He prefers the term “street pharmaceutical rep.”
Using corporate jargon is one way Siddiq makes comedy out of his subject matter. He deflates the romance of crime and makes it relatable. At one point, he laments: “There’s no H.R. for crack dealing”
He also finds unexpectedly moving comedy in dangerous dramas, like a drug dealer who becomes suddenly paternal only after Siddiq pulls a gun on him.
Siddiq’s earlier work was quicker, hungry for laughs. He has a patient delivery now, comfortable in silence, letting his expressive face and loose-limbed physicality do the work. With the exception of a few documentary elements early on, it’s a stripped-down affair: just him sitting onstage. The design behind him gets more involved with each installment, from curtains to streetlamps to a video of rain.
The first two chapters detail how Siddiq got into selling crack cocaine while navigating relations with his divorced parents. Part 2, “Loss,” is the darkest and most emotional, covering the death of his sister and his arrest. Both are propelled by propulsive tales of revenge in which Siddiq presents himself as a stubborn holder of grudges who pursues them to a maniacal, terrifying degree.
His moseying Southern delivery does not favor concision. His stories get into the weeds: They’re packed full of characters and digressions, and make mundane details (the clattering of dress shoes, the way a lawyer sucks in his teeth) seem as dramatic as a chase scene. But there are also explosions of violence that fly by without much introspection. This can be frustrating because you want to know what he feels. Repression, though, also seems part of the point.
The final chapters (“First Day of School,” “Pins & Needles”) are more contained and less tender. They also don’t feature a revenge plot, and you can feel the absence in the amount of suspense. Part 3 begins by focusing on his legal case, while the fourth, the longest and most indulgent, is about prison, before shoehorning in a comedian origin story at the end.
Siddiq says he doesn’t look for fights, but when he finds them, he tends to win. He is a comedy protagonist you don’t see much anymore, one perpetually cool under fire. He’s more like Axel Foley or Bugs Bunny than Richard Pryor. Siddiq rarely leans on the comedy of being afraid. An exception is a wonderfully funny telephone scene from jail, in which he is petrified to tell his mother he was arrested.
He repeatedly sets up threatening scenarios, whether it’s a guy pointing a gun in his face or a huge prisoner with a grievance, then handles them with the ease of an action-movie tough guy. “If I can’t change your ideology with conversation,” Siddiq says about an Aryan Nation member, “I’ll change it with my hands.”
As the title suggests, “The Domino Effect” hints at the idea of the present emerging from the past, and one gets the sense that as Siddiq gets deeper into the justice system, he hardens. The comedy becomes more intermittent in the final special. He likens life in prison to slavery but doesn’t dig into the point. His pugilism starts to take on a different cast. After learning that the only way to get out of a cellblock for gay inmates is to beat people up, he starts throwing punches in an ugly scene.
Siddiq’s recent Beacon show, which covered his life as a parent, is about the advantages and disadvantages of growing up in tough circumstances versus privileged ones, from the point of view of a flawed father. “Domino” mostly keeps us in the head of the young Siddiq.
In one of the clichés of our current era of theatrical stand-up shows, right before the closing joke the performer gets serious for a moment to articulate a theme or a thesis statement of sorts. That doesn’t happen here. Siddiq shows more than tells, and he doesn’t let arguments or lessons get in the way of the story.
And yet, there is a revealing moment toward the end of the saga. Reflecting on his own spirit, he laments those who spend their time frowning. He stays positive because he knows what he is capable of, what he could do to people. His relaxed vibe coils.
“I will beat your head in,” he says, then points at himself, “with my head.” There’s an uncomfortable laugh in the audience, which quiets down as it becomes clear Siddiq is not messing around. What he is doing, though, is unclear.
“I’m a very violent man,” he says. “I had to be. I was in a place with all savages and I became one of the top savages.”
It’s startling in part because we shouldn’t even be a little surprised. He’s been telling us stories of stabbing and shooting and fighting for hours. But he does it in a gentle, ingratiating style. There’s distance between the boy trying to survive and the man onstage describing him, now soft in the belly and a long way from his youth. But his wide expressive eyes in this moment shrink it down.
Siddiq is an entertainer, but he’s also one giving us a self-portrait, warts and all. Is he a hero or antihero? You can decide.
Violence in comedy is usually harmless, benign, the stuff of cartoons. Audiences love that. Siddiq exploits that, before pointedly making us feel the blow.
The post When Is a Stand-Up Special Like ‘The Wire’? When Ali Siddiq Is Onstage appeared first on New York Times.
