*UPDATE* Potylo To Join Jennifer Coolidge At the Wilbur Saturday

Jennifer Coolidge and
Rob Potylo

First, the Wilbur Theatre published a photo of Rob Potlyo and tomorrow’s headliner, Jennifer Coolidge, with the teaser, “What is Jennifer Coolidge & Quiet Desperation's Rob Potylo cooking up for tomorrow's Wilbur show?”

Then Potylo posted this on his own Facebook site: “Lovely evening. TTs was an epic show! But before that Jennifer Coolidge (Best In Show, American Pie, Legally Blonde) came over to the ole' Allston crib to go over some tunes I'm playing with her show at her Wilbur Saturday night.... And even grabbed a Clif Bar. We had some sick vocals cooking. Wish I cleaned the room a little bit better.”

When I reached Potylo to see what was up, he said only, “Looking to sing happy birthday.”

What, exactly, is going to happen? I couldn't say, but it will involve music, and hopefully, we'll see this end up on Potylo's Quiet Desperation on MyTV.

Coolidge was born in Boston and spent her early years in Norwell. After establishing herself as a popular character actor, she has been trying her hand at stand-up. Here are a few thoughts on her last performance in Boston from Brian Joyce.

UPDATE I got a little more info on how this came together from Potylo this afternoon. "I did the wilbur opening for Jon Lajoie last year and crushed, left an impression," he says. "She needs someone to sing happy birthday to her dad. They called yesterday and asked if I was interested and I spoke with her. She came over. I also told her about Quiet D and we could be filming shit with her too."

Guest reviewer Brian Joyce on Jennifer Coolidge

Boston native and Emerson grad Jennifer Coolidge was in town playing the Comedy Connection Wilbur Theatre on Saturday. Coolidge is an extremely talented comic actress who can turn a throwaway line into a punchline (See Best in Show, how she drags out the simple "Errm... me, too" into a bizarre rejoinder). But you can measure her stand-up career in months at this point.

I was covering another show (featuring Lynn's Sean Lynch -- stay tuned for a video interview with Lynch later this week), and I knew Brian Joyce, craetor of AltCom and co-host of the Wednesday night talk show The Whole Truth with Derek Gerry, was going. So I asked him for his thoughts. Here they are.

Joyce's review:

Coolidge did a short set - about 45 minutes - but it was packed with laughs and she left the crowd wanting more. There were a couple obligatory digs at Paris Hilton and Kim Kardashian, but for the most part she takes an absurdist approach to her storytelling, with not-so-True Hollywood stories about her long-lost scene in "Brokeback Mountain" and the time she got beat out for the role of "woman with flappy vagina" by the "girl at the bottom of the well in 'Silence of the Lambs'."

She played up the ditzy-blonde routine, but her dirty innocence and sultry theatrics make her appear genuine, even vulnerable. Some of the one-liners were a bit obvious, but her stories were funny, engaging, and ridiculous. She seemed as comfortable and confident on stage as many veteran stand-ups.