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A Sketchy Crowd
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Kings
of the road: the Second City troupe.
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By
James Yeara
Second City
Swyer
Theater at the Egg, Nov. 14
Second City’s Friday night performance at the Egg was nouveau
vaudeville. Like the vaudeville productions that toured America
almost a 100 years ago, Second City’s show consisted of numerous
short scenes (12 in the 50-minute first act, 18 in the 40-minute
second act); “dumb shows,” wordless routines with music that
audiences responded to even without narrative or characters;
classic jokes dramatized; and bawdy, topical humor. One of
three national tours out of Second City’s Chicago headquarters
(Second City was also performing on tour in Barrington, Ill.,
and New Orleans on Friday night), these six performers (Jennifer
Bills, Pip Lilly, Nicky Margolis, Lori McClain, Kevin McGeehan,
Craig Uhlir) and musical director-piano accompanist (Joe Grazulis)
show the franchise is not only alive and well, but kicking
ass.
This was the most tightly scripted Second City show to have
buzzed into the Egg (an annual event): Only four scenes had
any impromptu improvisation, and one, the 5-minute “Freeze”
encore, was literally an afterthought. The sketches were more
focused political/cultural satire than in the most recent
shows, and Friday’s performance did feature lots of dancing
or staged movement to recorded music tracks, from buzzy techno
to classic rock to a line-dance tune involving audience participation.
The office-chair ballet alone would do Mark Morris proud,
but the musical hit Friday was “Triple White” (Bills, Margolis,
McClain), a band whom their producer, P. Shitty (Lilly), proclaims
are “so white they make the Dixie Chicks look like Destiny’s
Child.” The three white-on-white female singers then rapped
and literally hipped and hopped through their debut song on
the wonders of white: “I know you’re all dreaming of this
white Christmas” they butt-shaked to the audience before “Peroxide”
gave a shout out to other women with “butts white as mashed
potatoes.” They dedicated the song, of course, to “Pork .
. . the other white meat.”
In addition to packaged musical groups, Second City bravely
broached American military misadventures: “We invaded Afghanistan
in 2001, and Iraq this year—where should we invade next?”
a gung-ho sergeant shouts to the audience. The audience suggestions—first
Mexico, then Canada, and finally France—found the six performers
running through a series of two-minute skits with the same
frame: the indigenous dangerous wildlife (a hysterical bit
miming animals no human should encounter), movies that “taught
me all I ever knew about” the country in question (Y Tu
Mama Tambien, Strange Brew, National Lampoon’s
European Vacation), and conversations between natives
in broad accents and stereotypes, all culminating with the
U.S. invasion and rebuilding (“This is where the Taco Bell/Wal-Mart
will go”).
It was cultural satire that generated the biggest laughs of
the evening: A split-scene sketch focused on a middle-age
father and mother having post-fight sex in the backseat of
a station wagon while on the other side of the stage their
20-something daughter listened in on the cell phone, unbeknownst
to her un-tech savvy parents, literally giving a blow-by-blow
color commentary to her titillated fiancé. The sight of the
father with his wife’s pantyhose over his head while she is
spread beneath him, her feet flying up in the air, coupled
with his screaming, “Come on, baby, put your legs in the air,
this is a stick-up” brought roars of laughter from the audience.
Roars matched only by the reaction to the daughter’s look
of abject revulsion and the boyfriend’s avid interest.
As the proving ground for such Saturday Night Live
stalwarts as Bill Murray, Gilda Radner, Tina Fey and Chris
Farley, Second City’s touring group gave ample proof that
sketch comedy is still king.
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