Chelsea Handler Brings The High and Mighty Tour to the Beacon

Handler has spent three decades in stand-up and the current hour leans on the part of her life she used to keep offstage — being single at fifty, staying that way on purpose, and the friendships that ended up carrying more weight than the marriages she did not have. The delivery is still fast and unsentimental. She works without a set list on some nights, which is why the same tour reads differently in different cities.

The Beacon opened in 1929 as a movie palace and kept nearly all of it — the gilded proscenium, the two enormous caryatids flanking the stage, the ceiling mural under thirty-foot arches. It seats about 2,800 across orchestra and two balconies, and it is an interior landmark, so nothing gets renovated away. For a talking show the first balcony is often better than the rear orchestra; the room was built to carry an unamplified voice.

The Beacon sits on Broadway at 74th, one block from the 72nd Street stop on the 1, 2, and 3. Doors open an hour before the 8:00 PM start and the lobby is narrow, so the line spills onto Broadway when it is close to full. Amsterdam Avenue one block west is the faster place to find a ride afterward — Broadway itself backs up while the house empties.