Ali Wong’s hilariously debauched ‘Single Lady’ is an atypical take on divorce

For all that comedian Ali Wong talks about sex onstage, her first three specials came from a place of inherent sexual constraint: a long-term, monogamous marriage.

In “Single Lady,” her fourth, self-directed hour, all guardrails are off. Two years ago, Wong got divorced from her husband of nearly a decade. Wong now narrates in the same gleefully graphic detail she once applied to the birth of her first child. “I really went on a tear,” the 42-year-old says, and has the anecdotes to show for it.

But with “Single Lady,” Wong wants to do more than simply recount her exploits to an ecstatic crowd at L.A.’s Wiltern Theater. The stand-up wants to reframe the middle-aged divorced woman from a pathetic figure, per popular stereotype, into a triumphant one, with herself as the leading example.

“Look how much fun I’m having,” she exhorts her audience.

Wong makes a convincing case, albeit less about the broader condition of midlife divorce than her own highly exceptional set of circumstances — starting with the fact that her own split was national news, an experience she calls “a bat signal letting all potentially interested men know I was suddenly available.”

Those men include, in Wong’s telling, a famous film director; a 25-year-old who sent the performer her first-ever thirst trap video; a 60-year-old who screamed when he climaxed; a Japanese American drummer; and a white guy who couldn’t tell a tea cup from a rice bowl.

“I’m not trying to trap a man anymore,” Wong explains, nodding to the running theme of her breakout special, 2016’s “Baby Cobra.” Liberated from the confines of commitment, she’s free to sample all the modern meat market has to offer.

“Baby Cobra” ended on a brilliant reversal. For all Wong’s insistence that she just wanted a rich husband to take care of her, it was she who ended up paying off her spouse’s student loans. This bait-and-switch established money and the agency it affords as the skeleton key to Wong’s body of work, which now includes an Emmy-winning role in “Beef” as well as her comedy. Motherhood, Asian American identity and transgressive profanity are all signature motifs, but it’s wealth that Wong discusses with a truly unique level of candor and pride, in “Single Lady” as in prior releases.

Wong insists that her suitors pay for the first date.

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