Photo of the diner across from the bus stop cnr Clark and North Ave where I’m waiting to go “home”.
I feel ungracious saying it, but the “Best of Second City” sketch comedy suffers from the same disease as most Saturday Night Live sketches I have seen. They keep going until everybody gets it (which is way past the point of funny).
The show tonight was about 70% sketch with some crowd-pleasing short-form improvised games. There were a couple of semi-improvised scenes in each half.
This is the Second City Touring Company, doing their most successful sketches – 6 players, 3 women. The show went for exactly 2 hours.
The cast increased to 12 (5 women) after the show for 30 minutes more improvisation, all short scenes, no handles. Ask-fors were more refined than at iO. Multi-person scenes were still the norm (4 – 6 players in most scenes).
The theatre is probably 300 people at cabaret tables, with waiters roaming during the show. I arrived at 730 and they put me on a WAIT LIST for the 8 o’clock show!
Overall, it was crowd-pleasing stuff, with the obligatory sex and incest jokes. Toilet humour was, however, rejected. The audience was drinking – sort of Scriptless with more people. Well done, but not a show, as Steve J would say, for the afficionados!!
