Spotlight at The Second City: October Review

Back in September, producer/hosts Taylor Hreljac and Gabe Meacher debuted Spotlight at the Second City, their new two-nights-per-month series showcasing the work of rising sketch troupes. They continued earlier this week (Oct. 14-15) with two more talented acts. 

First up was Sarah Bennett, whose credits include JFL42, the Toronto Sketch Comedy Festival and the Toronto Fringe show Sarah and Racquel Rule the World. It takes lots of chutzpah to do solo sketch comedy, and Bennett certainly has an endearing presence and a subversive edge that could find an audience. Judging from her 30-minute set, however, she needs to find a better way to structure and focus her material and add some variety to her characters.

Bennett begins with a sketch about being on a date and settling the bill, taking out various cards to collect points, each card more outlandish than the previous one. Cute. 

The bulk of her act, though, seems to be set at a Thanksgiving dinner table, with each character/speaker set up by a little video title card. 

The young Kyle, clad in a baseball cap and a Five Nights at Freddy’s jacket, gets the most stage time in a series of monologues set years apart. At first he is a brash 12-year-old awkwardly linking Thanksgiving with violence. Later on, he’s pained by his parents’ divorce and a new man dating his mom and, inspired by the Drake/Kendrick beef, lashes out. And finally, as a 19-year-old, he gives us tips on “picking up chicks,” telling us about “ceiling the deal.” 

Presenting snapshots of a kid likely to be sucked into the manosphere is a promising idea, but Bennett’s writing could be more nuanced. Her portrait of a middle-aged mother (Kyle’s mom?) giving a toast is more vivid, letting us see how she’s being influenced by AI and conspiracy theories. 

I was lucky enough to see the next troupe, $20 Sandwich, at the Toronto Fringe earlier this year, where they showed off their improv skills. Judging from their half-hour set here, the quartet, whose short form videos have gone viral on social media, is equally adept at sketch. 

Their opening scene finds three people left by a villain in a room with a bomb. The clock is ticking down, but one of them (Brennan Asbridge) needs to complete the streak on her Duolingo app game before midnight. The blackout line is inspired. 

The four comics know how to bring out the surreal in the everyday. A man (Tony Hall) gets out at an earlier subway stop to avoid talking about work with a chatty colleague (Asbridge). When he gets caught (the logic of this moment could be clearer) he eventually reveals a long history of lying — and other questionable behaviour. 

Every sketch troupe has at least one scene about cell phone use, but $20 Sandwich audaciously sets one of theirs during the climactic moments of the Lord of the Rings trilogy, with hilarious — dare I say “precious”? — results. 

Callbacks to an absurd feminine hygiene commercial and a repeated gag about unlikely actors auditioning for famous films help add variety to the show and illustrate the troupe’s facility with short-form sketch. 

Even when a scene doesn’t come off — one set in a bowling alley winds up in the gutter — it’s always filled with intriguing ideas. And the actors bring focus and clarity to all their characters, whether they’re playing a piece of plankton (Chase Jeffels), a stereotypical film baddie (Shaun Hunter) or, in the very clever closing sketch, a grocery list (Asbridge) that an easily distracted man (Hall) forgets when he’s at the store. 

So next time you see $20 Sandwich on a comedy club menu, dig in. 

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