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by Ashley Botting, Leigh Cameron, Kyle Dooley, Etan Muskat, Kirsten Rasmussen and Kevin Whalen, directed by Kerry Griffin

The Second City, Toronto

March 9-July 12, 2015

Cast :“Laugh to keep from going crazy”

Second City’s new show How to Kill a Comedian has an uncharacteristically unjokey title.  That’s because being funny has come to have serious consequences.  One has only to think of the shootings at the satirical French newspaper Charlie Hebdo in Paris in January this year when 12 people were killed and 11 wounded or the attempt to kill Danish cartoonish Lars Vilks in February, to realize the sobering reality that lies behind the choice of title.  After an opening song pleading with the audience not to kill them if the show offends, the Second City ensemble launches into one of its smartest and funniest shows yet.

That opening song, unique in the annals of recent Second City shows, states explicitly the serious meaning that informs the whole evening.  Virtually all the skits from then on have to do with defining limits of taste and offense.  This may not sound like a very laughter-provoking theme, but in the hands of Second City’s six writer/performers it leads to a series of acutely sharp-witted, well-observed sketches.

The very first is explicitly about limits.  A young man (Etan Muskat) and woman (Ashley Botting) on a their second date are so eager to progress to later-date activities they decide they need to set up guidelines about what exactly each will permit because being interrupted by a “no” in mid-action is so embarrassing.  Hands here – yes; hands there – no.  Anal for her – no; anal for him – yes.  They

each confess fantasies to see if the other will be willing to enact them.  Naturally, the more detailed the negotiations are the less spontaneous their actions will be, and one of the cleverest aspects of the piece, besides hearing the couples’ outlandish fantasies is wondering when talking about limits will stifle action.

In another skit a young couple (Ashley Botting and Kyle Dooley) are ready to settle down to watch television when a rerun of The Cosby Show comes on.  They then debate whether they can still enjoy the show now hat so many allegations of sexual assault have been made against the comedian.  Does present knowledge of a performers negative actions mean works by that performer should be out of bounds.  Even though a song by Chris Brown was “our song” for the couple, can they still listen to it and feel happy knowing now that Brown is a wife-beater?  They then move on to hypothetical situations.  Would you accept great seats to the Super Bowl even if you were given them by Jian Ghomeshi, a Canadian broadcaster accused of sexual assault?  The finely tuned humour lies in watching the couple tie themselves in knots in trying to establish intellectual rules about entertainment and pleasure.

One fine skit initially is set up as a musical panegyric to the liberalism of Pope Francis I (Kevin Whalen) who has backup group of two nuns (Leigh Cameron and Ashley Botting).  The Pope descends into the audience to listen to members confess their sins with the intent of showing how he pardons everything.  After a few real audience members, he goes up to a plant (Muskat) who says he’s gay.  Surprise – that’s okay now with the Pope.  Then he goes up to another plant (Kirsten Rasmussen), who says she’s had an abortion.  Uh oh, things were going so well, but now he has reached his limit and has to condemn her to hell.      

In a parallel skit Whalen again plays the central character who this time is just an ordinary guy.  He comes up against one negative event after another from losing is job to riding on the Parliament streetcar.  Each time he protests by tearing off an item of clothing.  By the end, wearing only he boxers, he is carrying a baby on the TTC whose crying makes all the all the passengers angry.  Thinking he has nothing else to take off, he momentarily considers throwing the baby out the window, before deciding that peer pressure should not dictate his protests.  Just as the Pope has his limit for pardoning, this guy has his for protesting.

This theme even extends into many of the mini-sketches that separate the main skits.  In one a mother (Rasmussen) in an airport with her child (Cameron) sees three men pass by.  The first (Whalen) is wearing a yarmulke, the second (MUskat) a turban and the third a red cowboy hat.  Each time a man goes past the girl asks her mum why the man is wearing a funny hat.  Trying to teach her child to be cultural sensitive, the mother tells the girl that the first man is wearing that kind of hat because he’s Jewish and for the second because he’s a Sikh.  But for the third the mother gives one look at the smirking dude and answers, “Oh, that’s because he’s just an asshole”. 

If many skits make fun of the problem of what can or can’t be done and said, others point out the need for satire to address inherent biases in society.  One of cleverest of these, one destined to become a classic, involves three friends playing a new board game called “Privilege”.  Dooley, a white guy, chooses the white playing token.  Rasmussen, a woman, chooses the pink one.  And the non-white Muskat has to settle for the brown token.  During the course of play, Dooley’s character gets a degree without having studied and does insider trading but doesn’t gat caught, amassing ever more points each time.  Rasmussen’s character always gets cards that make negative remarks about her appearance until she is finally sent to the gym.  Muskat’s character loses points each turn, can’t even get a cab and winds up detained by police in jail indefinitely without charge.  Rasmussen and Muskat finally complain to Dooley that the game is biassed, but since he’s been winning, he thinks it’s just fine. 

In a related mini-sketch, an inversion of “Privilege”, Botting plays a TV news reporter interviewing two doctors (Muskat and Cameron).  To Cameron, she addresses all the substantial questions about the doctors’ research, while to Muskat, all she comments on are his appearance and clothing. 

The sketch that begins the second half of the show is the only one in the show that actually involves killing comedians.  In this one, set in faux-medieval times, Rasmussen plays a self-delighted queen who is letting us, the audience, help her decide who her next court jester should be.  We cheer if we like the jester’s joke, and boo if we don’t.  When we boo the first jester off the stage we hear the sound of a falling guillotine blade.  Only then does the queen inform us that our rejection of the potential jester means death.  This sketch thus puts us in the same position in relation to the potential jesters as we were with the Second City cast in their

opening song of pleading.  We thus are asked to judge the context of humour, as have so many characters in previous skits, this time, however, with the knowledge that our disapproval means death to the character.  It is a wonderfully trenchant satire of rule by majority. 

The cast performs on such a uniformly high level, it is difficult to single anyone out.  But if forced to do so, I would have to choose Ashley Botting for her delightful off-theme solo skit where she plays a mature Broadway diva giving a nightclub performance.  She spots a former lover in the audience and notes his name, eye colour, hobby and where he’s from.  Then in an amazing display of musical improv, she sings a song “written especially for him” that not only is hilarious and rhymes but incorporates all the data she has just collected.  It’s a hugely impressive act.

While the show has almost no misses, some skits come close to outstaying their welcome.  Both are off-theme – one involving two Valley Girl-like best friends (Rasmussen and Cameron) who have to face being separated, the other where an audience member is forced to become part of a sting operation by two cops (Muskat and Dooley) against a known cocaine dealer (Whalen).  The funniest part of the latter lies in how well or not the audience member can simulate snorting a line of coke.  If done badly it’s funny.  If done too well, it’s funny for a different reason.

Otherwise, Second City’s new show would provide an ideal introduction to anyone who has somehow missed one of Toronto’s top attractions.  The serious undercurrent about the importance of comedy seems to have brought out the best in the performers including a passion for what they do that has as always been strong but never so urgent as here.  This is sketch comedy that is not afraid to make you laugh and think.          

©Christopher Hoile

Note: This review is a Stage Door exclusive.

Photos: (from top) Whalen, Etan Muskat, Ashley Botting, Leigh Cameron, Kyle Dooley, Kirsten Rasmussen; Ashley Botting and Etan Muskat; Kirsten Rasmussen Kyle Dooley and Etan Muskat; Kirsten Rasmussen as the Queen. ©2015 Racheal McCaig.

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