‘Cold’ Iliza Shlesinger Heats Up McFadden’s Crowd for Gilda’s LaughFest [Photo]

"I'm so cold. It's (blanking) cold here!," Iliza Shlesinger said Friday night at McFadden's as she launched into a 10-minute bit about how women handle the cold, which isn't well.

Well, that was at least judging by how the bit ended with a group of women freezing to death after a bad group decision to forego wearing jackets.

It was all a part of Shlesinger's energetic and animated hour-long set for Gilda's LaughFest, delighting her hard-core fans and cementing her position as one of comedy's rising young stars.

Shlesinger's place in the comedy world is secure enough that she could have easily sold out a larger LaughFest venue like the Wealthy Theater.

As it turned out, the cozy third floor of McFadden's Restaurant & Saloon, 58 Ionia Avenue SE in Grand Rapids, was the perfect setting for Iliza's controlled, but veering close to manic delivery.

Her facial expressions and quick asides are a huge part of her act, and may have been lost in a theater setting. So, whoever made the decision to have her play four shows at McFadden's was a genius.

The sold-out crowd was able to get a close look at her transformations into a troll trying buy a stylish satin shirt ("One that would define me as 'mature'"), a gollum-like character preying on a man looking for a girlfriend, and the crowd favorite, a vagina caught in a pair of tight jeans.

It's these highly-animated bits that make her a huge TV commodity in the age of Netflix. Her latest special, Freezing Hot, is currently airing, and is doing solid numbers. (Most of Friday's set was from that show.)

Pointing out the differences between the genders is a comic device as old as the Catskills, but Shlesinger's sharp observations and social commentary breathes new life into it. Often slipping into voices like a dull witted "woo girl" or a dumb, video game obsessed boyfriend, and the devil, who popped up to bring home a point about the conflicting messages that women receive in advertising.

My favorite was a part of the female brain she called the "party goblin", which comes out to dance on tables after the mere presence of alcohol.

But it was her crazed woman planning her wedding on Pinterest that resonated with the crowd, especially she recalled an earlier discussion with a group of yellow dressed audience members by threatening to put her bridesmaids in similarly hued gowns.

Shlesinger's fans went home happy, especially because she came back out after the show and took selfies with them. As one fan told me after the show, "It was EVERYTHING!"

It certainly was, and it was the best start to well planned LaughFest as I could have asked for.

A Grand Rapids comic, Adam Deagy opened the show, with a tight, if dark, twenty minute set that featured his love of drinking (and driving) which led to great comparison between car crashes and unwanted pregnancies. A clever bit merging every Tom Hans movie into one was well written and welll delivered. If the local comedy scene has a lot of Adams, it's in a good place.