Funny Or Die?

During first week of January, Comedy Bar had the Festival of New Formats. Every night, there was up to 4 1-hour shows, all free, where local comics can try out material. I presume that most of it was new stuff that needed to be audience-tested.

On Thursday, I saw 2 shows. First up was "The Celebrity Stand-up Hour". Comedians came up, pretending to be celebrities who want to try their hand at stand-up comedy. It sounded like a hit-or-miss concept and it was mostly misses. The real Al Gore doing comedy would probably not be that funny. A bad impersonation where Gore = stiff, wears a suit, "into the environment", is at a 2nd level of not funny. Kate Middleton (the future Mrs. Prince Williams) has practically no known "personality" or caricature traits. So to present her, in a badly-done "posh" British accent, as an upper-class heiress with a penchant for dirty words isn't shocking, merely painful. I was never so happy to have a beer in hand. The hour was partially saved by a mildly amusing take on Taylor Swift, a bubbly teen whose observational humour on any topic eventually circles back to boys; and M. Night Shyamalan as a comic who's into twist ending for his jokes. But the final comedian was a genuinely funny Superman. His take on the Man of Steel is that jokes let comic and audience find humour in a common experience but as Superman points out to laughter multiple times, he can't actually relate to any situation described in the jokes he give because ... well, he's Superman, an alien being from Krypton who lives a fortress of ice.

The 2nd show saved the evening for me. A much more veteran line-up of comedians (Ashley Botting, Jan Caruana, Matt Folliot, Chris Gibbs, Sean Tabares) did an improv version of "This Is Your Life". An MC (Darryl Pring) would bring up an audience member and probe them for bits of personal history. If some situation sounded promising, he would get the cast to "re-enact" the memory. Of course, it's never quite what the guest had experienced (not even close I'm sure), but the audience found it hilarious. I've never been partial to Improv. Back in high school, I thought improv students were 2nd rate comics and 3rd rate actors. Nothing about the American version of "Who's Line Is It Anyway?" changed my mind. But these comics cracked me up with their quick thinking and off-the-cuff jokes. For example, a guest belonged to a dodge-ball team called Abusement Park. During the subsequent re-enactment, one of the improv women introduced a rival team called Bruise On Your Own Adventure. Though the cast was a disparate group of comics, although there were a couple of best Improv winners, they sustained an hour of great comedy. I might have to give an estalblished Improv troupe like Second City another look.