Spotlight at The Second City: November Review

Now in its third month, Spotlight at the Second City — producer/hosts Taylor Hreljac and Gabe Meacher’s showcase for emerging sketch comedy troupes — is finally hitting its stride. 

This month’s double bill was the most consistently enjoyable show yet. Each troupe is bursting with talent, and either would be a fine addition to a comedy lineup. 

First up was Summer Dad, who began by tweaking the lyrics to A Chorus Line’s “I Hope I Get It” to satirize the often demoralizing entertainment industry. This proved to be a common theme in their 30-minute set. 

In one sketch, an actor is talking with a non-actor friend who says he really, really wants to attend his upcoming show but doesn’t know if he’ll have the time. The actor has some great comebacks.

In another, an unknown actor goes viral for a silly catch phrase and, in 90 seconds, the troupe chronicles his rise and fall. Like the opening scene, this sketch is beautifully staged, making use of every inch of the theatre’s space and lighting/sound design. 

Summer Dad takes care in finding the right setting for a scene. They use the backdrop of a community theatre company’s auditions, for instance, to introduce an older woman’s sexual awakening. And they set their sendup of C-list Canadian celebrities at the Loose Moose restaurant to make it that much more pathetic — and funny.

I first saw the company two years ago at the Toronto Fringe, and they’ve improved a lot since then. Each one of the seven performers — Chris Johnson, Chrissy Sharma, David Hudon, Kaitlyn Stollery, Kevin Forster, Rachel Powell and Hrejlac — gets a chance to shine. This excellent set shows that they’re more than ready to get to that next level. Hopefully not at the Loose Moose. 

I wasn’t familiar with the second troupe, the Red Hot Sili Peppers, but now I understand why they took home the Sketchiest Sketch Troupe Award at this year’s TOsketchfest. 

Their opening sketch demonstrated their delightfully off-kilter point of view. A mother is tucking her two daughters in bed, when the girls begin asking her questions about life that become more and more unhinged — and existentially horrific.  

We’ve all seen dozens of sketches about finding love online. But the troupe’s next sketch takes that premise to an outrageous extreme by having a woman (the fearless Glenna Walters) sing a song about an AI boyfriend that has her friends (Emily Callahan and Julia Ettlinger) reconsidering their own relationships.

The few sketches explore rivalries among female friends, including one in which a woman brings her skeptical friend to see a psychic, only to have her friend get a much more detailed — and interesting — reading. 

In another, a woman announces her engagement to her two lesser-off friends. The comedy here comes not just in the writing but in the physicality of the performances, as the bitter single friends hold out their glasses for champagne to drown their sorrows. 

Right now, the range of their subjects might not be huge, but they feel fully present in each scene, and there’s some great physicality throughout (such as a sketch in which Callahan leaves her first pilates class). More importantly, each sketch feels authentic to the performers’ experiences. 

As that psychic might say, they have a promising future ahead of them.

Spotlight at The Second City continues with new troupes in December.
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