Reviewing the Glenn Beck comedy tour theater simulcast…

The New York Times’ Mike Hale writes about attending on of the theater simulcasts for Glenn Beck’s Common Sense Comedy Tour…

The small group that braved West 23rd Street was audibly pro-Beck, laughing at the same times as the capacity audience in Kansas City and occasionally saying something in menacing tones about the Federal Reserve or the progressive income tax. Being the critic, I didn’t cheer or heckle, but I did yell at the screen once, something I don’t think I’d ever done in a movie theater. It was 50 minutes in, when Mr. Beck announced that he was taking a 15-minute break and coming back for the second half of the show. “You’ve got to be kidding me!” was out of my mouth before I knew what was happening.

What comic — and this was billed as the Common Sense Comedy Tour — takes a 15-minute break? (Or does a two-hour show?) Maybe one whose live audience — and I say this with the utmost respect for both sides of this equation — has an age range similar to what you’d find at a Broadway play. But also one whose performance is an odd and unwieldy combination of stand-up, revival meeting, motivational seminar and stump speech. And that’s before Mr. Beck emerges from the intermission in white Colonial wig and knee breeches for an hourlong lecture on American history and self-reliance.

The Common Sense show was light on the histrionics and explicit doomsday talk that have attracted viewers to Mr. Beck’s Fox show and drawn condemnation from liberal commentators (though he did slip in a reference to thinking the unthinkable). There were no tears. Perhaps Mr. Beck dialed things back because the show is largely a promotional vehicle for his new book, “Glenn Beck’s Common Sense,” which he hawked from the stage and which was advertised relentlessly during that 15-minute break. There’s some cognitive dissonance there: one of his big applause lines, which is also one of his few clearly stated points, is “we need to stop spending.” On everything except Glenn Beck’s books and DVD’s, apparently.