Bow down, mere mortals of the manor, denizens of the domicile! The one, the only, the original “domestic goddess” returns to the stage this weekend when comedian Roseanne Barr comes to Blue Note Hawaii for a two-night gig.
At age 64, the Hawaii island resident may have mellowed a bit since her early days as a stand-up comedian and later as an actress in the pioneering sitcom “Roseanne,” but you still don’t want to mess around with her. Especially if she’s shopping at the Kmart in Kailua-Kona, where she’s taken to tooling around in a motorized shopping cart while recuperating from a broken kneecap.
ROSEANNE BARR
Where: Blue Note Hawaii, Outrigger Waikiki Beach Resort, 2335 Kalakaua Ave.
When: 8 p.m. Saturday and Sunday
Cost: $45-$55
Info: bluenotehawaii.com or 777-4890
“I run into people on purpose sometimes,” she joked in a phone interview, her voice breaking into the famous cackle that opened every episode of “Roseanne.”
“I got a cane too, and I’m like, ‘I should put a cattle prod on the end of this cane and lightly tap people to get ’em out of the way of my vehicle, like senior citizen assault: Remove those kids! I gotta get my crackers!’”
Seriously, though, Barr has always been proud to declare herself a domestic goddess, and who wouldn’t be?
Rather than the the bedraggled “housewife” and slightly more prestigious “homemaker” of yesteryear, Barr broke into comedy fancying herself the unsung but ultimate boss of the household. It didn’t matter if that meant spending all day watching TV, or not having a celebrity-perfect figure, she was going to have fun with it.
“It’s good that I’m fat, because I’m a mom, and fat moms are better than skinny moms,” she said on “The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson” back in the mid-’80s, her national debut. “What do you want when you’re depressed? Some skinny mom? ‘Well, why don’t you run around a while and that will release adrenaline in your blood and you’ll better cope with stress.’ Or some fat mom? ‘Well, let’s have pudding, Oreos and marshmallows. When you wake up from that sugar coma it’ll be a brand-new week!’”
Island-style life agrees with Barr, who sports a healthier lifestyle these days. She lives on a 48-acre spread, where she and her family run an organic farm, raising grass-fed sheep and goats and growing fruits and vegetables to sell to the local community. She’s about to come out with her own brand of cookies, but spends most of her time “baby-sitting (her five grandchildren), picking fruit and writing jokes.”
“I am really living as a domestic goddess, and that’s how I was raised in Salt Lake City. I’ve been able to return to the way I was raised, and that’s fun,” she said. “I get all my jokes from that, my everyday life.”
That doesn’t mean Barr isn’t outspoken on other fronts. Over the years, she’s voiced views that run the spectrum of political issues, and the platform for her 2012 presidential run (she finished sixth, representing the Peace and Freedom Party) raised many of the issues voiced by Bernie Sanders in 2016. She was sharply critical of Hillary Clinton in the 2016 campaign, and voiced some weak support for Donald Trump, calling him “a complete idiot,” but “with a fresher slate.”
Barr’s take on the current political situation is that she’s “glad that we have the system we have.”
Her sitcom show is considered a groundbreaking characterization of working-class America. During its 10-year run on ABC between 1988 and 1997, the show’s Connor family tackled subjects including birth control for Roseanne’s TV daughter Becky (Lecy Goranson), domestic abuse of sister Jackie (Laurie Metcalf), and the revelation that both Roseanne and Jackie had been abused as children. The show won four Emmys and three Golden Globes, but perhaps most tellingly it won six People’s Choice Awards.
“Roseanne” has enjoyed continued success in syndication, but Barr isn’t dwelling on the past.
“I enjoyed 10 years of it, and it was a blast,” she said. “The thing I remember most is the love the cast had for each other and the fun we had every day, and the great jokes. That’s mostly what I remember, and look forward to maybe re-creating.”
You read that right. There is the possibility of a Connor reunion, the subject of a recent tweet. At this juncture, Barr didn’t have an opinion as to the story line.
“The cast is into it,” she said. “You’ll have to wait and see.”
She’s especially happy to be doing stand-up again, especially after her broken knee sidelined her for three months — she said it’s “at about 80 percent now” — and delayed her planned November appearances at Blue Note Hawaii. (Tickets for those appearances will be honored.)
Thirty years after her appearances on Carson, she feels more ready than ever to entertain.
“I’ve always loved being a comic. Mostly I enjoy it because it’s just me, and I’m saying what I want to say and I’m writing the jokes,” she said. “I don’t have to have any guys in suits telling me what to do about it. It’s just me and the audience. I love making people laugh.
“The old comedians, they say it take 30 years to make a good comic, and I have to agree. It takes 30 years to know how to read an audience, and how to deliver a line, and how to control a room of between 400 to 5,000 people with just your voice, no dancers, no light shows, just your voice. It’s a great art form.”