By Michael White
Sep 14 2006

MARGARET CHO

The controversial comedian returns looking a little different.

Everything else about her remains intact.

Margaret Cho's body of work has long concerned itself with matters of the body. The Korean-American comedian's breakthrough off-Broadway stand-up act and subsequent film, 1999's I'm the One That I Want - as much an autobiographical purge as a collection of jokes - documented her battles with anorexia, substance abuse and crushed self-esteem in the wake of her failed ABC sitcom, All-American Girl. Infamously, network executives had encouraged the then-moderately overweight Cho to lose 30 pounds in two weeks - in order to, essentially, portray herself onscreen. The brutal regimen landed her in hospital with kidney failure, but no matter; within months the program was cancelled, and Hollywood seemed to be done with her.

The svelte Cho who walked onto the stage of a sold-out Queen Elizabeth Theatre last year was virtually unrecognizable compared to her late-'90s self, but her new material quickly proved that the acquisition of a dream body hadn't dulled her comedic edge. She seems to have remained, at heart, a misfit who grew up with, and continues to be most comfortable among, other misfits: queers, geeks, punks, the awkward and the artistic. When she comes to Vancouver this week as part of the CanWest ComedyFest, she'll be workshopping new material "in combination with greatest hits and fan favorites," says her website.

Calling from Los Angeles, Cho says she'll still be talking about "-beauty, the politics of beauty, the relationship of beauty and power in society. There are some new things that are happening around my mom" - Cho's impression of her is a staple of her act - "some fun reminiscences there."

President Bush, of whom the Left-leaning Cho has always been a vocal critic (her 2004 State of Emergency tour was constantly updated to reflect the events of the U.S. presidential election), also remains firmly in her crosshairs. "The Bush administration is pointing at all these things that are not problems, but are suddenly problems because he doesn't want us to focus on the real problems: wire tapping; or the secret prisons that we just found out about; immigration, which is really not a problem but for some reason it suddenly now is; or gay marriage or abortion," she says. "I'm interested in the [U.S. government's] process of distracting and how much of it America is willing to buy and put up with - how much we will not travel with our lotions and gels."