I remember going to Second City decades ago, when it first opened, and watching Dan Ackroyd, John Candy and Joe Flaherty do their groundbreaking work. I couldn’t afford the cover back then, so I’d show up for their improv set after the show. For free. I miss the ’70s!
Second City’s 67th revue, This Party’s a Riot, recently opened, and I went to opening night. You could feel a pressure in the room. The previous show was a critical and financial smash, and everyone was waiting to see if the new show would measure up.
The good news is that I found the new show one of the most consistent in recent memory. Every sketch had a good reason to be included, but gone were the flashes of brilliance found in the last show.
The cast was the same except for newcomer Carly Heffernan. But she’s the same comedic type as four-time vet Dale Boyer, which I thought limited the show’s scope.
Boyer, who is in almost every scene, is the glue that holds the show together. But like the show itself, she’s consistently good but missing the “crazy.”
Those wild flashes of brilliance come from Inessa Frantowski. I never knew what she would do next, and she was often involved in my favourite moments of the show.
Kris Siddiqi has a lot of talent, as evidenced by earlier shows, but he’s underused here. Rob Baker has some very good moments as the greying elder statesman of the bunch. Adam Cawley, who I enjoy, seemed to perform every character at the same over-caffeinated pitch. There’s a point at which his manic energy is too much.
As usual, the title provides no clue and no obvious theme, except for the opening, which takes place at a dance club and the night after. I found it trite and dated, the only sketch in the show I didn’t like. But the show immediately recovers with a painfully honest duo of wedding speeches by bride and groom.
Then there’s a funny/touching two-hander between a boomer father and his generation X son, which ratchets up the irony as granddad shows up to reminisce.
A sketch about people in the Middle East whose rebellion keeps getting interrupted by the arrival of the Internet and other technologies is a winner, both funny and provocative. I also liked a piece about hoarding in which the actors go into the audience and talk about audience members as if they were antiques and bric-a-brac. Very funny, especially when CBC’s Jian Ghomeshi was dismissed as a “piece of crap.”
Relationships and family dynamics have always been a mainstay of Second City revues, and this one is no exception with a wonderfully convoluted sketch of a family confrontation between a son, his mother and stepdad.
I wouldn’t want to have missed Frantowski’s bizarre turn as an unhappy office worker, nor the sketch about a nurse and man in a coma, in which we hear his thoughts in voice-over as she natters on. But some sketches play at a lower level.
Usually, the cast ends its shows with a musical number, but not this time. Instead, there’s an improv piece that feels laboured and unfocused until the final punchline that I guarantee will leave you gasping with shock and delight.
Definitely a show worth seeing, but don’t reveal the ending of the last sketch, or I will have to hunt you down. As I say, it’s a shocker!
Post City Magazines’ humour columnist, Mark Breslin, is the founder of Yuk Yuk’s comedy clubs and the author of several books, including Control Freaked.
