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by Leigh Cameron, Kyle Dooley, Becky Johnson, Etan Muskat, Kirsten Rasmussen and Kevin Whalen, directed by Paul Bates

The Second City, Toronto

August 25, 2015-January 31, 2016

“Life is short when you’re a pie”

After the serious undertones of Second City’s last show How to Kill a Comedian, the comedy’s new show is decidedly fluffy.  Its new production Click Bait & Switch boasts some of Second City’s finest performers, but they can can do little to redeem a series of sketches that is strictly hit and miss with the feeling of more misses than hits.  Unlike Comedian, its overall conception is not strong leaving the audience to savour the shows high points while waiting out its low points.

The show begins with an excellent sketch that promises much.  At an outdoor barbecue a vegetarian (Becky Johnson) wants the host (Kyle Dooley) to put her tomato somewhere on the grill where no meat has been.  His ridicule of her prompts the rest of the guests to accuse him of “food shaming”.  In a sharp satire of social media bullying, this escalates to the point where everyone is eventually accused of some bizarre form of shaming or other. 

The concept of the show, however, has nothing to do with this.  In a series of group sequences, the cast announces pointless lists, quizzes and tips having to do with celebrities, lifestyles, relationships and self-improvement in the manner of such websites as BuzzFeed or the sponsored content that lines the margins of so many webpages.  There are two problems with this.  One is that the real content found on sites like BuzzFeed is so inane already it is difficult to satirize.  “Seven celebrities who were born before they were famous!” is one of the better attempts, but most don’t really outdo the idiocy of the real thing.  The second problem is that a collection of lists, quizzes and tips is not a concept that can provide cohesion to a collection of comedy sketches.  The periodic group sequences merely remind us that we’re seeing a comic miscellany rather than highlighting its underlying themes.

Director Paul Bates also uses another technique to tie the sketches together, but this, too, is problematic.  He reuses the same bits of physical comedy as punchlines.  One bit of shtick is introduced when a pianist (Kevin Whalen) warms up to play the piano, interlaces his fingers and stretches them palm outwards to crack his knuckles.  This somehow also cracks all his fingers so that he can no longer play.  Much later, in one of the more interesting skits, a husband (Kevin Whalen) and wife (Kirsten Rasmussen) lament that their bodies are ageing and they feel they have become unattractive to each other.  They have just managed to reason their way out of this impasse, when Rasmussen cracks her knuckles and the skit ends.  People may laugh at the unexpected ending, but the skit would be much more satisfying if it had an ending that developed organically from the premise.

The same is true of the bit of another physical routine.  Early in the evening the cast show off their fantastic ability at mime when one of them choking on a bone, receives the Heimlich manoeuvre only to have the ejected bone fly across the room to lodge in someone else’s throat.  Later on there is a a dated but very well acted skit about nouvelle cuisine taken to its reductio ad absurdum – a new restaurant allows patrons to taste the chef’s creations but not eat them.  Kirsten Rasmussen and Etan Muskat are dining and Becky Johnson is their smug but informative waitress.  The most logical way for the skit to end would be to have Muskat pay by showing the waitress his credit card but not letting her run it through the machine.  Unfortunately, Bates decides to end the skit with a reprise of the Heimlich manoeuvre routine.                    

Usually the best Second City sketches satirize social and interpersonal relationships.  Strangely, in this edition these kinds of sketches almost all fall flat.  It a skit about “what men should not say to women”, two construction workers (Etan Muskat and Kyle Dooley) call out oddly off-topic remarks to the “babes” passing by only to shift into weepy testimonials about their private woes with women.  Not only have we seen thins kind of skit before but this version lacks punch.  Another, about a Spanish dog rescuer (Kyle Dooley) and his one adopted child (Leigh Cameron) can’t decide what it is satirizing.  Is a man rescuing a boy rather than a dog supposed to be funny?  Not really.  Is it that the man treats the boy like a dog?  Not really.  It is that the boy thinks he’s a dog?  Not really. 

In a third example, three men at at the cottage skipping stones on the lake when one of them (Etan Muskat) decides its time to come out to the other two (Kyle Dooley and Kevin Whalen).  The switch is that Muskat is not coming out to his friends as gay or as a woman in a man’s body (which at least would be topical), but rather as a white man in a non-white body.  The only good joke to come of this is that now Dooley and Whalen’s characters can’t point to Muskat as proof that they’re not racist.  Otherwise, the sketch is just a collation of clichés about white people even including the old canard that white men can’t dance. 

In contrast to skits like these, the best episodes in the show, oddly enough, are the ones most divorced from realism.  Leigh Cameron sings a song that comes out of nowhere about being a pie.  It is as utterly charming as it is totally whacky.  In the most hilarious sequence in the show, Kevin Whalen slinks on stage in a helmet and tube doing his impersonation of a caterpillar.  Etan Muskat does a voiceover in a British accent à la Attenborough as if we were watching a nature documentary.  What makes this so priceless is the contrast between Muskat’s narration about the beauty and wonder of nature and Whalen’s first-hand expressions of horror at having to go through metamorphosis from one creature into another whose purpose he doesn’t understand.  In another sketch Becky Johnson and Kevin Whalen play mother and son driving together in car.  They decide to play a game they used to play of trying to outscare each other with scary stories.  The stories move from personal details that the two would rather not know about each other into the supernatural.  This is also one of the few sketches that has a really good punchline that develops from the skit itself.

The level of the acing of all six performers is so high that Click Bait & Switch can probably be enjoyed for the sake of the acting alone.  If only that acting were harnessed to better writing and a better concept, the show would really soar rather than merely fitfully amuse.  Given this cast, this is a case where the improv session that follows the main programme may actually be better than the scripted section.

       

©Christopher Hoile

Note: This review is a Stage Door exclusive. 

Photos: (from top) Etan Muskat, Kevin Whalen, Kirsten Rasmussen, Leigh Cameron, Becky Johnson and Kyle Dooley; Kirsten Rasmussen, Kyle Dooley, Etan Muskat, and Becky Johnson. ©2015 Racheal McCaig.

For tickets, visit www.secondcity.com/shows/toronto.