The Second City e.t.c won three well-deserved Jeff Awards Monday night for its latest sketch show, Studs Terkel’s Not Working. In the revue category it took home awards for best production, best director Matt Hovde and best actress Amanda Blake Davis. I loved the show and Davis especially stood out among the excellent ensemble. The e.t.c. revues have been rocky of late, so it’s a joy to see the theater back in fine form. The Second City also won a tribute award in honor of its 50th anniversary year.
Speaking of which, the Second City is celebrating its 50th anniversary weekend with a series of panel discussion the weekend of December 12-13. It announced the full lineup yesterday. Tickets for each panel are $25 and will be available for purchase at The Second City Theater Box Office at 312-337-3992 beginning today at 10am and online at secondcity.com. Here is the complete lineup with my geeky thoughts and opinions included.
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Second City fans of a certain vintage may recall the ballyhoo during every mainstage performance about other shows at the theater, including the long-gone weekend children’s show, which was promoted, to general laughter among adult audiences, as “Sunday, Sunday, the little bastards’ fun day.” Well, those fun days are about to come back, you lucky little bastards:
Second City is set to debut the kids’ show Hogwash in the de Maat Theater on the third floor of Pipers Alley Nov. 8. Tickets will be $10 a pop (and a mom and a kid). The new 50-seat theater is named after late instructor Martin de Maat. (Disclosure: I took classes from Martin at Players Workshop of the Second City in the ’80s and also performed in one of the Second City kids’ shows back in the day.)
Hogwash is an improv show for kids that’s been around a while–in fact, we profiled it in the very first issue of TOC. But Kerry Sheehan, president of Second City Training Centers & Education Programs, told me recently, “We’re going to do our own Second City productions” in the space as well. I spoke with Sheehan for a story in the next issue of Time Out Chicago Kids, which will be out next month, so watch for our roundup of improv classes for little bastards boys and girls.
That’s the message America’s favorite D-lister asked fans to take away from her sold-out show at the Chicago Theatre tonight. Crowing about being unbanned from CBS’ The Late Show, Kathy Griffin confided that she did the deed with Letterman–and then asked everyone in the audience to pass the deets along to the tabs. It was just part of a raucous raunchfest that had the joint hooting all evening.
So, of course, I took my mother-in-law, Marsha. She’s a teacher, in town from the Twin Cities for the weekend. Can you say awkward?
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Opening a brand new stand-up show to a near sold-out crowd at Congress Theater last night, Cross came armed with a new book, a new pilot and a solid two hours of new material filled with the same deadpan cynicism that won him acclaim on Mr. Show With Bob and Dave. Obligatory photo:
Photo by Marina Chavez
Now imagine that exact look on a child version of David Cross. That’s how the show opened – with a mini version of Cross coming on stage, reassuring the audience in true Cross-ian style that “I’m pretty sure God’s told a few white lies, mainly to cancer patients” then stomping off stage in a rage. When the real Cross took the stage, singing a Frank Sinatra-style opening song wherein he promised to “rip comedy a new asshole and then fill that new asshole with jokes,” all knew it would be true.
And lo it was. Cross spent the next hour forty-five touching on his
trademark subjects—religion, politics, ridiculous products, SkyMall— in the same style as his 2004 Grammy-nominated album, Shut Up, You Fucking Baby! (In fact, Cross might have given a nod to the album’s second track “Austin Powers Saying ‘Yeah Baby’” by planting a dude dressed like…go ahead, take a guess…that’s right…in the lobby before the show just to make guests uncomfortable).
Despite Arrested Development’s cult following, stints in TV series ranging from Human Giant to Law and Order: Criminal Intent and a purportedly smokin’ hot relationship with Amber Tamblyn, Cross is still pretty damn cynical. Material went from a self-deprecating story about shitting himself while walking his dog to misconceptions about health-care reform (“Every Thursday in Canada is Grandmother Killing Day”) to the Mona Lisa of awful porn titles—a real film titled My Ass Is Haunted. As in previous shows, Cross’s true and most polarizing trump card is his biting criticism of religion, specifically Judaism and Christianity. Case in point: “Whenever I see [Orthodox Jews] walking around in wool from the 18th century, I thank God for letting me not believe in you because they really believe in you and they’re in that and I’m in shorts eating a hot dog.”
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The line between the groggy, funny Mike Birbiglia onstage and the hungry and exhausted one nibbling from a vegetable tray in his tour bus moments later is a thin one, I’m happy to report. I ended up in said bus (warning: stargazer alert) because I attended his sold-out show at the Vic on Saturday night with a posse that included folks friendly with the comic from way back when. Turns out, he’s a nice guy. He chatted amiably with a bunch of us about his old D.C. improv troupe the Regal Beagles and how he once sat through a marathon night of improv at iO (a bit much, he said, but he loved TJ & Dave). He also seemed thrilled to be touring. After turning in 42,000 words of a manuscript he’s been working on (a book version of his off-Broadway show Sleepwalk with Me), he seemed happy to be on the road and in front of audiences with his latest show, I’m in the Future Also. The audience at the Vic seemed to think the feeling was mutual.
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Desperate isn’t exactly the right word to describe Lucy Bauer’s new one-woman sketch show at Gorilla Tango. Likable might be a better adjective, or perhaps adorable, if it’s not too offensive. But if you’re born and raised in New York, attended college in sun-kissed Honolulu, studied improvisation with two of the finest improv schools in the world (iO and the Second City Conservatory) and are in your midtwenties, what exactly about your life thus far screams desperation? Not much, as we learn in Bauer’s short show in which the able performer mixes sketch and improvisation to generally desirable effects.
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American Idol winner Fantasia has received rave reviews for her lead performance, both on Broadway and on tour, in The Color Purple, which hits the Arie Crown Theatre Wednesday 2–Sunday 6. Around Town intern D.L. Hopkins got a few minutes with Fantasia this afternoon following a press conference to announce the show’s new fundraising effort for a Hurricane Katrina relief charity.
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I’ve never hidden my fandom for The State, nor for its members’ later projects. I rooted for Viva Variety, saw Wet Hot American Summer in the theater several times, have seen the touring version of Stella a handful of times, e-mailed links to Wainy Days, DVR’d the Reno 911! movie, and bought friends copies of The Baxter. It’s the kind of thing that sticks with you when something—show, band, book—hits you when you’re 15 and excited about these arts you’re just beginning to figure out. I’ve been rooting so hard for these guys for so long, it’s interesting to me, that with the new Michael and Michael Have Issues series on Comedy Central, they’re actually reaching out for that help. Since the show began, both Michael Ian Black’s and Michael Showalter’s Twitter streams have read like town criers for MMHI, asking for anyone, everyone to watch it so it doesn’t get canceled (as was the case with the Stella TV series on Comedy Central, which barely made it out of the womb). It really does feel like the first time this sizable cult following has been marshalled to do anything other than quote 15-year-old sketches back and forth. So with the final installment of the seven-episode airing last night, will it be back?
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Dude, check out our slide show featuring the cast of Vaudezilla’s Rollin’ Out of Here Naked: A Big Lebowski Burlesque, hitting the Gorilla Tango Theatre stage Saturdays in September. Just don’t spill your Caucasian in your mad scramble to grab tickets.
“For those of you who couldn’t get Mainstage tickets, we’re glad you’re here,” Second City alumni Matt Craig announces at the beginning of “Frankenmatt,” a two-person sketch revue that premiered at the Second City e.t.c. last night and also includes fellow alum Frank Caeti. It’s true, the Second City. e.t.c. has long been considered the bastard brother to the Mainstage, but any Second City devotee will tell you that its shows are often more experimental and adventurous and “Frankenmatt” qualifies in those categories. A combination of both traditional and experimental sketch, “Frankenmatt” showcases two former Second City giants still at the top of their game even though they’re both now slugging it out for bigger gigs in the City of Angels where each currently resides.
After a slight, vaudevillian number opens the brisk, 55-minute show, it really begins with a road trip back to Chicago, a journey home where we learn of Craig’s love for grunge music and meet his jailbird uncle in a cutaway scene. It’s hilarious stuff. In the next sketch we meet two hapless guys in a pastry shop, a showcase for Craig and Caeti’s ability to play nuanced shades of dude. Another sketch examines what happens when a public school merges its arts and athletics, and in a nice jolt of right-brain nuttiness, we get a memorable heist scene where all actions can only be taken on a count of three. This segues into the evening’s finest sketch, a casting call in which an actor is called upon to deliver his lines in the style of George Gaines of Punky Brewster and Police Academy Fame. Where do they come up with this stuff? Also gut-busting is a Southern courtroom scene just in time for the 50th anniversary of To Kill A Mockingbird. Not only do their Southern drawls impress, but here they buck Second City tradition by playing multiple characters and jumping roles. We wish we would see more of this at the regular e.t.c. and Mainstage shows.
If you’ve got tonight free, this is a show worth catching. While Caeti scored two seasons on MadTV, the truth is we’re not seeing much of either of these guys right now so this is a real treat. Plus “Frankenmatt” proves that when genius improvisers leave Chicago, the genius stays with them.
