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by Ashley Botting, Sarah Hillier, Etan Muskat, Allison Price, Connor Thompson, and Kevin Whalen, directed by Reid Janisse

The Second City, Toronto

October 2, 2014-January 31, 2015

“Sleep, Sex, Snack”

Second City’s new show Rebel Without a Cosmos will likely please those who are simply looking for an hour-and-a-half of easy live entertainment, but that’s not really what Second City is best known for.  The troupe’s website claims that “Second City boldly journeys to hilarious new dimensions” in its fall show, but that is, more often than not, just what the new show fails to do.  Instead, unlike Sixteen Candles, its hit show earlier this year, the writers of Rebel have fallen back on too many antique set-ups for sketch comedy as if they had exhausted their imagination in the previous show.

Some sketches arrive long after public focus in the topic has peaked, such as the skit about a young woman (Sarah Hiller) who has travelled to Venice to “find herself” because she has read a book modelled on Elizabeth Gilbert’s Eat, Pray, Love (2006).  The funniest thing about the skit is the parodic title of the book, Sleep, Sex, Snack.  Another sketch is a satire of the Buck Rogers radio show, as if anybody in the audience had memories of radio shows, much less of Buck Rogers.  To enliven the antiquated idea, the cast invites a volunteer on stage to be the omniscient robot for “Tuck” (Etan Muskat) and his female sidekick (Hiller).  The fun is that the cast has to play along with whatever answers the robot gives about the dangers of the planet.  That fun also seems like it would be more suited to the improv section of the evening rather than the scripted section.

One sketch about a middle-aged man (Kevin Whalen) talking to one of the “geniuses” (Muskat) in an Apple store would be funny if the humour didn’t appear aimed at a non-computer-literate crowd.  The genius has to explain to the customer what “LOL” means and that an iPhone has more uses than as a phone.  Then there is the sketch based on the ancient premise of a 13-year-old boy (Whalen) sent to talk to his priest (Muskat) about his bad habit of masturbation.  The skit is very well acted even though we feel we’ve seen it all before.  The writers try to give the premise a twist my making the priest a wannabe hip guy, but unfortunately nothing comes of it.  Drunk-driving teens approaching a RIDE stop and sex via Skype also feel overly familiar.

The show does have several high points.  The funniest skit of the evening is about Canadian content in porn, but it’s over in less than a minute.  Of the long-form sketches the winner is clearly the one about a college guy (Whalen) taking his girlfriend (Hiller) to see his home tome of Owen Sound.  There sitting on the steps of a downtown store is the same loser (Connor Thompson) who was there when the college guy was in high school.  At first the “loser” seems to be an idiot savant since he amazingly has the driving routes memorized to anywhere in Canada.  But, as the girl discovers, he is just as precise about telling people their routes in life.  Not only does Thompson give a fantastic performance rattling off his long complex lines in a single breath, but the notion of his character is intriguing and the satire of what is a “loser” is more ambivalent.

A second, edgier long-form sketch involves a no-holds-barred argument between a husband (Thompson) and his wife (Ashley Botting) about when they each will finally sign the divorce papers sitting right there on the table.  When both do sign, each to spite the other, they immediately regret it.  Unsettling as it is, we come to realize that they both have become so inured to conflict they couldn’t be happy without it.

Several cast members have fine solo turns.  Etan Muskat makes a sincere plea to his unseen beloved that their love can overcome their differences – until the list of their differences starts to become quite extensive.  Ashley Botting sings what at first seems to be a folksy tribute to Canadian folksinging astronaut Chris Hadfield, until she gets to her innuendo-laden refrain, “Take me on a starry moustache ride”.  In a similar vein, Allison Price sings what seems to be a lesbian love song to Botting about finally finding the right yoga partner, though her characters is blissfully unaware that the subject of yoga is capable of more double entendres than a downward-facing dog.   

Some sketches misfire, like the one about a children’s entertainer (Thompson) having to make up a song for a Remembrance Day ceremony in Ottawa.  Some are just so-so.  Yet, director Reid Janisse does try to link more sketches together than is usually the case.  His cleverest idea is to frame the show with a critique of individuals who nowadays view themselves as the centre of the universe.  At the top of the show, these people are all the varieties of rude people one encounters in everyday life.  At the end these people are members of a therapy class of adults with behavioural problems who are trying to learn to be “normal”.  Janisse’s frame perhaps too subtly poses the question of what difference there is, if any, between habitual rudeness and diagnosable behavioural dysfunction.

While the level of invention is below that of Sixteen Candles, the show is still enjoyable.  One might say that this time Second City has become a victim of their own past history of setting the bar for comedic excellence so high. 

©Christopher Hoile

Note: This review is a Stage Door exclusive.

Photos: (from top) Connor Thompson (face covered), Allison Price, Kevin Whalen, Ashley Botting, Etan Muskat; Connor Thompson and Sarah Hiller.  ©2014 Racheal McCaig.

For tickets, visit www.secondcity.com/performances/toronto/nowplaying/.