Spotlight at The Second City: April Review

Blame it on the nice weather. As temperatures rose to the double digits for seemingly the first time this year, the energy at this month’s Spotlight at the Second City double bill of emerging comedy troupes felt a little flat.

Or perhaps everyone still has a laughter hangover after last month’s massive TOsketchfest.

Co-hosts/producers Taylor Hreljac and Gabe Meacher, like all good comics, immediately pointed out the elephant in the room at the top of the show, taking us through a sequence of scenarios to make us feel like we were outdoors. A clever bit.

First up was Spencer Glassman, who presented the solo show Amish Famous: The Musical, a strange hybrid of mystery, musical and cultural satire.

The premise is that an Amish woman named Jane has disappeared from her home in the Amish town of Intercourse, Pennsylvania. The show begins with a detective who, speaking completely in rhyme (why?), tells us that Jane disappeared. A clue comes when he discovers her diary.

Turns out Jane, quoting the lyrics to Wicked (none of which gets a laugh), wants more out of life than what Intercourse provides. When she discovers that American Idol is holding auditions in New York City, she packs up her bags, which include a cloth doll, and heads for the Big Apple.

While there are some bizarre laughs, including the sight of Jane’s faceless Amish doll doing a stand-up set at the Comedy Cellar and later rapping after she meets Robert DeNiro, the piece, directed by Zoe Marin, feels scattered and unfocused.

Glassman seems more intent on making puns (“goat-switching” instead of “code-switching”) than on grounding the show and its characters. Sending up society’s obsession with true crime is one thing, but neither the writer nor her work does anything to make that funny.

It was also difficult to get a good sense of her songs, because projection and diction issues rendered many of the lyrics incomprehensible.

The night’s second act, the trio Best by Far, scored with a couple of solid sketches. In one, a man at a restaurant is suspicious when his waiter says “Excellent choice” to every selection he and his date make. The blackout line in this sketch feels earned; dare I write it’s an “excellent choice”?

The three performers (Brody Wilkinson-Martin, Rachel Sellan, and Austin Anonsen) are best when they test the edges of acceptable behaviour, such as when three people are vaping and confess to increasingly dark feelings of violence.

Another funny sketch is set during a Remembrance Day presentation, in which students, having interviewed war veterans, present dramatic recreations of the soldiers’ memorable encounters.

While the scene’s physicality and storytelling works well, the sketch needs a stronger, sharper ending. The same could be said of most of their sketches.

While they’ve got lots of energy, I don’t quite get a sense of the troupe as a whole, or its individual members. That’s clear from the opening sketch, in which three people at a funeral criticize their late friend’s musical choices.
More specificity and bolder choices could help them define who they are. Maybe then they’ll live up to the “Best” part of their name.

Spotlight at The Second City continues monthly. Tickets and schedule details here.

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