Marc Maron: From Bleak To Dark

Marc Maron is not the first comedian to mine laughs from the darkest moment of his life. But he’s now done it better than just about anybody else. ... From Bleak to Dark proves that the riskiest thing you can do as a comedian is look inward and find a way to laugh through the pain.

With this hour, he allows us, too, to accept the inevitability of death and loss while also embracing the courage of feeling whatever grief or levity might come our way. Either way, we can put down the bat and pick up the feather. So to speak.

The first 20 minutes are classic Maron riffs on how bad it’s all gotten. ... But after those first 20 minutes, Maron begins to shade in other colors. ... In a lesser stand-up’s work, a stretch of material as balanced and insightful as that one could be the centerpiece of an hour. For Maron, it’s there as a bridge from where the special begins to the place he wants to spend the bulk of his time: talking about the death of his partner, the director Lynn Shelton. It’s an extraordinary run of jokes.

Maron delivers a performance that is as much a contemplative, no-holds-barred, one-man show as it is a stand-up special. No wacky impersonations or fall-down-funny stories filled with heightened versions of crazy characters from Maron’s childhood here; this is more about the carefully crafted, meticulously honed observations of a smart and cynical man who has us nodding along as often as we laugh.

The emotional centerpiece of his new special is the 2020 death of his partner, the director Lynn Shelton. Here is where he really shows his evolution, because he handles this passage with a light touch, humbly and without the melodramatic negativity of his title.