Dwight Slade

Comments (0) By Bryan Miller Wednesday, Jan 14 2009

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Acme Comedy Co. Somewhere off the coast of Alaska, at the fringes of Sarah Palin country, comedian Dwight Slade began to despair. "This year was the first year I started working cruise ships. When I was floating in the gulf in Alaska, entertaining retirees, I started wondering if I had entered my own retirement," he says. Flash forward a few months and Slade was at a new plateau in his career, taking top honors—and the big cash prize—at the prestigious 2008 Boston Comedy Festival. The accolades are well deserved. Despite his youthful appearance, Slade is a veteran performer, having spent more than two decades perfecting his act on the road. The childhood pal and former collaborator of the great Bill Hicks is a social critic, much like his late friend, but Slade's approach is more amiable. He returns to Acme this week for a full lineup of shows that will also serve as a de facto release party for his just-pressed DVD, Right and Raunch, a two-concert special recorded in a single night. In the first show, a squeaky-clean Slade shows off the comic chops that impressed the ocean-going octogenarians while they gummed their buffet pudding; the second show is Slade unfiltered, trading gentle social satire for inventive invective and blistering blue material. Expect a blend of both styles at Acme as Slade veers between the sacred and the profane, the cerebral and the farcical. 18+.
Jan. 13-17, 8 p.m.; Jan. 16-17, 10:30 p.m., 2009