La Fin de La Semaine Essay Question: Special "Show Business is My Life" Edition

[Okay kids, I'm aware that the following has little or nothing to do with the raison d'etre of this here blog, so I crave your indulgence. Hey, I've had a long week. 😎 -- S.S.]

The short version: Sometime in the early or mid-70s, I was fortunate enough to see a performance by the late great comedian Dick Shawn, at -- of all places -- Max's Kansas City, a tragically hip rock club which you old-timers will remember was the very definition of a small room. Shawn was very very funny and as always wildly original, but it was the act's conclusion that has stuck with me. It was performance art before the phrase had been coined -- a long (easily 20 minutes) surreal monologue (with background music) called "The Massa," and it grew wilder and more physical as it went along. On one level it was a parody of a certain vein of sentimental Civil War claptrap, especially the movie version of same, but it was about much much more and when it was over I realized that I had just seen something truly great.

I have been looking for a video version of it for ages, and today I finally found one -- from a 1954 appearance on the old Steve Allen show. Okay, not really -- it's only snippets, at the beginning and very very end of a routine otherwise about pop singers doing opera. Still, I think you'll agree that it's a tantalizing fragment, and in any case, the whole clip gives you a pretty good idea of Shawn's comic genius.

And now, as you may have guessed, all of this leads us inexorably to the subject of the weekend's business. To wit:

...and the greatest performance by a non-musician artiste -- poet, comedian, actor, monologist, mime(!), whatever -- you yourself have personally witnessed live is...?

Discuss.

No arbitrary rules here, which is to say, it doesn't have to be a solo act, i.e. if you saw something like Richard Burton's Hamlet on Broadway, you're allowed to nominate it. And yeah -- you actually have to have seen it yourself in a club or theater, not on home video or in a movie. And don't try to sneak any athletes in there, or I'll come to your house and thrash you soundly.

I should add that after Shawn, my pick would be this guy, who I saw doing a show at Paramus High School (opening for Phil Ochs, I kid you not) sometime in the late '60s. But that's a story for another occasion.

Alrighty then -- what would YOUR choices be?

And have a great weekend, everybody!!!