Brace Yourself, She’s Going to Share ‘Rock Bottom,’ Bridget Everett’s Unbridled Show at Joe’s Pub

You’ve heard it before. Maybe you’ve said it before. New York is so over. It’s just a big shopping mall for the hyper-rich. Luxury apartment towers are sprouting like crystalline fungi all over the formerly funky East Village. A vibrant street culture has given way to wall-to-wall carpeting by Duane Reade and Citibank and Starbucks. As a bracing antidote to this prevailing attitude, check out the raw and riotous new Bridget Everett show, Rock Bottom, a Public Theater production that opened at Joe’s Pub on Wednesday night in a blast of brash vulgarity and true rock ’n’ roll transgression. Who says the city no longer produces artists who challenge, provoke and even, on occasion, dare to disgust? Ms. Everett, a downtown cult figure, has a big voice, a big body and a mighty capacity for testing boundaries — both her own and the audience’s. Now she’s hitched herself to some more uptown folk: the songwriters Marc Shaiman and Scott Wittman, whose credits include Hairspray and the backstage-on-Broadway television series Smash.