Fraser starts weakly, inching onto the stage and engaging the audience with standard comic introductions, inquiring how the audience feels and commenting on the weather. But after a few minutes, she hits her stride talking about New York as a Mecca of misplaced anger. She keenly observes the insanities of daily life in the city, waxing comically on train musicians and the public ritual of covering one's nose with a convenient flap of clothing when an offending stink fills the subway car.

Her tirades are divided into segments, with transitions marked by Fraser's imitation of a recorded phone operator announcing that "your call is important to us".

All of this, by the way, induces chuckles and eye-rolls of familiarity, even as she flirts with the absurd. At one point, she adopts the persona of a sex fiend-busting Mickey Mouse, unearthing and exposing the last Times Square peep-show pervert. We spend our lives on hold, she suggests, and while we while away the hours with Bell Atlantic, the world contorts and changes.

So, why don't we bomb the Amish? Because they're smarter than the rest of us. Their culture thrives in continually shifting times because they hold fast to their beliefs and they know how to give a tourist a thrill. Fraser earned the biggest belly laugh from implying that David Koresh would have met a less flammable end if he had built a gift shop instead of a walled compound.

Fraser delivers the laughs while revealing a hard-earned vulnerability, helping her transcend the conventions of both standup and theater.