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<b>by Ashley Botting, Craig Brown, Sarah Hillier, Allison Price, Connor Thompson & Kevin Vidal, directed by Chris Earle
The Second City, Toronto
March 11-August 10, 2014
</b>
TED Talks lecturer: “Don’t. Be. You.”
Sketch comedy can be quite a mixed bag, but Second City’s new show, <i>Sixteen Scandals</i>, is a real mélange of hits and misses. The title and the press release promise much: “Together we’ll strip away all pretences, and unmask the real motivations beneath our shared fascination with political train wrecks and red-carpet meltdowns”. In fact, only one sketch of the many that make up the hour and a half of the scripted section of the show has anything to do with the public’s enjoyment of the downfall well-known personalities. The rest juxtapose sketches in a wide range of styles on a wide range of topics – some new, some that seem like holdovers from earlier decades. Since most of the sketches concern relationships rather than scandals, it’s better to think of the show in connection with the 1984 John Hughes movie <i>Sixteen Candles</i> than with relevant current events.
The one sketch that comments on the scandals that title promises is also one of the best and ends the first act. Sarah Hillier and Craig Brown are discovered nude on stage – she with a towel and cupped hands, he with a well-placed hat. They sing about all the scandals in the media, like coke-snorting mayors and drug-taking pop stars, while the rest of the cast chime in as a chorus. One cast member, Connor Thompson, nearly always the odd man out in every sketch, however, objects to Brown and Hillier’s crass use of nudity to attract attention to themselves and to their assertion that burnouts of public figures constitute “scandals”. Real scandals, he says, are Russia’s invasion of Ukraine or the government’s failure to guarantee food stamps for children. Pronouncing Thompson’s scandals “boring”, Brown and Hillier sing away about celebrity misjudgements until Thompson tries to adopt their strategy to raise awareness about more important issues.
If the level of satire were this high and this sharp throughout, <i>Sixteen Scandals</i> would be a must-see event. More people should ask why so much “news” is devoted to well-known people being stupid rather than to major events with worldwide effects. When we laugh at Thompson’s awkward efforts, we are also laughing at our own misassorted priorities.
Several sketches approach this one in quality. We meet Brown playing a guy who lives downtown visiting his friend, played by Thompson, who has moved to Etobicoke. A joking discussion about the differences between downtown and suburban life takes a sudden turn when Thompson tells Brown he <i>will</i> move to the suburbs or else “We’ll elect him again!”
Kevin Vidal and Ashely Botting both have great solo pieces. Vidal (the only black cast member) plays a distressed father in some state of assimilationist denial as he hears his son tell him that he is coming out – as black. Botting gives a hilarious imitation of the earnest concern of a TED Talks lecturer whose solution to all your personal problems can be summed up in the motto: “Don’t Be You”. Craig Brown has a chance to display his talent for physical comedy in a fine sketch that shows us the suave, self-confident Brown in “What You Think You Look Like When You’re Drunk” in contrast to the barely functioning Brown in “What You Actually Look Like When You’re Drunk”.
One ensemble piece is virtually an Ionescoesque playlet where Allison Price takes her boyfriend Thompson home to meet her family. The family seem friendly at first until we realize that they have made competitive praising of one another’s actions into a ritual to which all newcomers must conform. In a second fine ensemble piece, Botting plays a housewife searching for an online recipe only to get caught up in a series of pop-up ads within pop-up ads and links to social media sites as enacted by the rest of the cast.
Although the publicity says the troupe “will defy your expectations as they lead you on a thrilling joyride through wild, uncharted terrain”, some of the terrain has been too well charted. Showing what a man (Vidal) and a woman (Hillier) really think when they speak to each other seems like a relic from the 1960s as does the sketch about fear of flying with Vidal and Thompson. Some sketches do take on bizarre premises but go nowhere with them. These include the discovery by a couple (Brown and Price) that there is a black hole in their closet; a boss (Vidal) who takes a colleague (Thompson) home to meet his wife (Hillier) who happens to be a goblin; and a mini-musical in the mode of Sondheim about a hitman (Thompson) taking leave of his sweetheart (Botting).
Director Chris Earle has nicely balanced a pair of cross-gender cast sketches – one about three supermacho guys (Botting, Hillier and Price) complaining about women, and one about three middle-aged women (Brown, Thompson and Vidal) who take to shoplifting in recompense for feeling “invisible”. Strangely, the men in drag distinguish their characters more fully from each other than the women in drag do theirs. If this troupe had its own television show one could easily imagine following the further adventures of the three women the men create.
Earle has given the show a punchy pace and even the less successful sketches are done with such verve that they are still enjoyable. Matthew Reid’s live piano accompaniment is always witty and apt. This a show specially created, it seems, to please both downtowners and suburbanites.
©Christopher Hoile
Note: This review is a Stage Door exclusive.
Photos: (from top) Sarah Hillier, Kevin Vidal Craig Brown, Connor Thompson and Allison Price; Ashley Botting and Connor Thompson. ©2014 Racheal McCaig.
For tickets, visit <a href="http://www.secondcity.com/performances/toronto/nowplaying/">www.secondcity.com/performances/toronto/nowplaying/</a>.
<b>2014-03-13</b>
<b>Sixteen Scandals</b>