Comedy is an art form for a talent on Martin Lawrence’s level. In his case, art blended into comedy seamlessly, thanks to a teacher who gave her rambunctious pupil five minutes at the end of class to perform stand-up before other students in exchange for chilling out for the rest of class. Nowadays the actor-comedian, who broke out as the boisterous title character of his own eponymous sitcom, maintains a low-key lifestyle, saving his energy for the right scripts and stand-up tours, where he takes rising stars on the road.
Lawrence chose Ms. Pat and Desi Banks as special guests for the Vegas stop on his Y’all Know What It Is! Tour, which should put to rest rumors about his health that rose during promotional appearances for Bad Boys: Ride or Die. The tour launched in June, opened by Benji Brown in Chandler, Ariz., and ends with an April show in Little Rock, Ark., with Deon Cole on the bill.
Lawrence seems to have done few interviews for Y’all Know What It Is! and prefers to let the comedy do the talking. By the time the tour wraps, his slate will be clear for preproduction on the sequel to 1999’s Blue Streak, a No. 1 box office smash co-starring Luke Wilson and Dave Chappelle.
Chappelle would inherit Lawrence’s crown as the king of television comedy a few years later as Lawrence starred in 2000’s Big Momma’s House and 2001’s Black Knight. He’d star in many other comedies, but it was his sequels to Big Momma’s House and Bad Boys that sold the most tickets in theaters. Bad Boys: Ride or Die, the fourth installment of the franchise, has grossed $400 million since opening the second weekend in June.
There was clearly an appetite for Lawrence’s chemistry with Will Smith and a nostalgia for Martin that led Netflix to begin streaming the sitcom in March. This was Lawrence at his most boisterous, with a portfolio of memorable characters that made episodes the topic of water-cooler conversations throughout the mid-’90s.
Lawrence had made his comedy bones by that time, navigating his way from comedy sets in Washington, D.C. to A-list stages in New York and L.A. before landing a series of increasingly high-profile television and film roles. By 1992, he was introducing new talent at HBO’s Def Comedy Jam and, two years later, had the biggest hit stand-up theatrical release since Eddie Murphy’s Raw with You So Crazy.
It’s understandable that Lawrence’s catchphrase of “Crazy … deranged!” from the set filmed at New York’s Majestic Theatre could tint the lenses he was viewed with through the rest of the decade. He experienced the excesses of fame, made mistakes and owned up to them.
Nowadays he’s associated with a simpler pre-Internet time when it was OK to push boundaries for comedy’s sake. Lawrence doesn’t seek to go viral. He’s an influence, not an influencer, and he’s always been good for a laugh.
Park MGM, 7 p.m. Nov. 29, starting at $69 plus tax and fee. ticketmaster.com
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