Summary
Sommore lends classy energy and long-time stage experience to Chandelier Fly, delivering a dependable and effectively funny hour.
I don’t know how long you need to do something to be considered the “queen” of it, but Sommore is apparently the queen of comedy, and who am I to argue? Maybe it’s a longevity thing. Chandelier Fly is only her second Netflix special, but she has been around since the 90s, and all of that stage and life experience comes through in spades. I love Sommore, pretty unashamedly. I love that her audience is visibly older-skewing, that she doesn’t chase trends, that she doesn’t have – or need – a gimmick of any kind. She reminds me of Leanne Morgan, like an older relative you can rely on to tell you the truth and not fall for any nonsense.
Filmed at the Garden Theater in Detroit, directed by Kevin Layne and written by Sommore and Wayne Baxley, all of Chandelier Fly has a classy vibe. Not that anything’s off limits, obviously. Her opening gambit is about the concept of Black love, mostly in the context of refusing to admit Luther Vandross was gay, even though everybody knew he was. But it’s nice to know Sommore gets a free Filet-O-Fish anywhere she goes. Those are the kind of perks we could all aspire to.
A decent-sized bit about people dying at the wrong time really won me over here. The Tito Jackson material is superb, embellished with little dance moves to try to remind people that Michael Jackson had a brother. But even that’s rooted in the idea of being older, having seen everything before. The touchstones and frames of reference are different from the norm. Billy Dee Williams gets an enthusiastic tribute – talk about classier callbacks – and the idea comes to clearer fruition in an acknowledgement that she didn’t get any of the subliminal shots in Kendrick Lamar’s Super Bowl half-time performance, more concerned with what he was wearing than anything else.
There’s Trump stuff, obviously, but pretty good Trump stuff, as that kind of material goes, and again, it’s ultimately informing a smarter point about the sanctity of Black history and preserving real truth, however ostentatious the distractions may be. Sommore doesn’t get preachy about these topics or treat the hour as an essential state-of-the-nation address; she’s just riffing. But the riffs are rooted in something true and honest, and they’re more palatable coming from someone with real life experience. Nobody wants to be lectured by a kid, after all.
There are some missteps, granted. There’s good stuff about Katt Williams’s infamous Shannon Sharpe interview – which was covered pretty extensively in Williams’ own recent special – and Shannon’s sex scandal controversy, which has blessedly introduced the phrase “old nut babies” into what I’m sure will be my everyday lexicon. But the obligatory Diddy material is more questionable. Sommore has a recurring framing device of “thinking outside the box” and trying to find the funny side in everything that risks reducing Diddy’s very serious crimes to some minor mistakes he made in his past. She’s clear that in no way is what she’s saying an endorsement of anything he did, but the angle that it’s equivalent to everyone’s behaviour in the ‘80s doesn’t really work.
The latter stretch of Chandelier Fly pulls things back, though, and it’s here that Sommore shows real skill in turning a dopey interview by Memphis rapper GloRilla into an unexpected female empowerment mantra that keeps being effectively reworked into numerous subsequent punchlines. It’s a strong closer for a very good hour, the kind of hour you only deliver after a long and successful career in comedy – one that doesn’t seem to be slowing down, much less coming to a stop, any time soon.
