Sunday, January 13

EVIL is a promising duo with youthful energy, whose Sunday afternoon set offered a nice balance of one-off throwaway jokes and longer, more story-driven scenes. They peppered their set with a few recurring bits, like a series of sketches following David Crockman: Lawyer of the Wild Frontier, which were 95% theme song, 5% dialogue, (Crockman's familiar refrain was sung by EVIL's Amy Thompson, who was accompanied by a banjo player seated in the back corner of the stage for the entire show). The show was well-paced and cleverly written, with a strong dynamic between Thompson and her teammate Sam Roos, especially in the show's most prominent storyline, about a pair of rivals with too much in common. —Matt Byrne

I didn't know much about The Good & Crazy going in, but from what I could tell from footage of a promisingly experimental live show posted on local filmmaker and improvisor Jared Larson's Vimeo page, it was going to be weird. What The Good & Crazy ended up being was a self-referential, deconstructionist clusterfuck featuring Larson, as well as Ted Tremper, director of two excellent improvised webseries, Break-ups and Shrink, and Paul Jurewicz, another Chicago-based improv dude, whose appearance in Break-ups is a highlight of the series. Every aspect of Unnecessary Defiance: The Story of the South Boston Race Riots, the formal name for The Good & Crazy's show, from the transition music (several different cover versions of Outkast's "Hey Ya") to the props (in a scene featuring three cowboys drinking together, two drank from tin cups, one drank out of a DVD copy of Tin Cup), served the sort strident absurdism that comes from three very funny guys messing around onstage. —MB

With the same energy as the Beatles and Rolling Stones (but with slightly less crowd fanfare), sketch duo the Pop Tarts (in their words the offspring of Flight of the Conchords and Spice Girls) hit the stage in Union Jack frocks and go go boots for a night of musical parody. These ladies flexed competent comedic chops and exuberant energy as they bolted out 8 or 9 numbers in numerous musical styles. One suggestion is that they create a more flushed out backstory. I kept trying to imagine the ages of their characters and just couldn't place them. Are they meant to be twentysomethings, in their thirties, middle-aged? I kept racking my brain trying to figure their story out. Nevertheless, in both song and snappy dialogue, they gave me a few chuckles. —Jason A. Heidemann

Saturday, January 12

The Playground's Matt Barbera turned me onto The Business at last year's festival and sufficed to say this team of youngsters has no business being this good this soon. Their scenes have a well-rehearsed spit and polish that lots of groups simply can't claim. For example, they deftly created a movie set complete with director, actors and tech people and it was all in service of a blink-and-you'll-miss-it blackout scene. Their mastery of language is a sight to behold. In a sketch set at an Olive Garden, we see both English and Italian unravel right before our very eyes (with a prop-heavy twist that was simply exubuerant). In another scene, the quintet showcases their pop-culture savvy as a couple uses Netflix recommendations to decide which movie to stream. My favorite scene was a fast-paced, whip-smart game of patty-cake that left me breathless. A couple scenes disappointed, but overall this group killed. —JAH

The four members of Chicago's Phat Beethoven opened their showcase in a pile, sort of vertically spooning, one on top of the other. "We hope you brought your thinking caps because we were recently voted the most cerebral group in town!" they said, and then made a bunch of dick jokes. This funny-stupid opening scene set the tone for a series of bizarre, well written sketches that were perverse and dark without trying too hard. That weird darkness crept up on the audience in the show's early scenes, becoming more apparent as things progressed before completely eclipsing everything in the David Lynch-meets-Godzilla final scene. Phat Beethoven had one of the few sets I can recommend without reservation; they were hands down one of the strongest teams I've seen at the fest. —MB

I never know what tricks Tim Soszko and Micha Philbrook of the tim&micah project will have up their sleeves, but I'm rarely disappointed. Last night was a reprisal of their latest revue Quinary in which the duo is unabashedly self-referential and exuberantly meta. Looking like a couple of svelte, avante-garde spelunkers (these guys always wear their trademark black and at one point were outfitted with tiny lights so they could see in the dark) they read fan mail aloud, moved about the stage with mirror-image precision, perfectly acted out a scene with stitched together stock dialogue from every action, gangster and noir flick known to man and even performed their first interdimensional sketch. There's always a sketch or two that has me scratching my head, but these "purposely pretentious" absurdists are longtime Sketchfest favorites of mine and I suspect always will be. —JAH

Heavyweight is something like a retroactive supergroup, a team whose members performed together for years but have all separately achieved notoriety on their own. This year's iteration of Heavyweight featured Mark Raterman and Nick Vatterott (the team's other two members, Brady Novak and TJ Miller couldn't make it) performing the entire sold out show dressed as Southwest Airlines flight attendants, who were tasked with entertaining passengers with a "skit show." This clever conceit opened the door for some goofy throw away jokes, the duo poked fun at the jokey attendant banter that everyone who's flown Southwest has rolled their eyes at, and the sporadic blackouts between scenes were apparently caused by turbulence and in-flight power issues. The team settled into a rhythm early on, Raterman mostly played the straight man to Vatterott's unhinged parade of animated weirdos in an ultimately enjoyable collection of scenes. —MB

Kerpatty's Pat Dwyer and Erin Pallesen are well known in the city's sketch scene as talented physical comedians, but the most interesting aspects of the show were more intellectual. Like Heavyweight, some of the biggest laughs came from the team's tweaking of sketch conventions; their home-recorded a capella versions of overused pop nuggets like "Gangnam Style" and "Call Me Maybe" acted as interstitial music, to the delight of the audience. A mysterious box sat far stage left for the entire show, its mere presence torturing Erin Pallesen, who'd turned it down in favor of $300 in a game show sketch early on. Near the end of the set, Pallesen gave into temptation and opened the box, which emitted a strange glow, Pulp Fiction style. I was hoping there'd be some sort of payoff beyond that, perhaps the knowledge of the box's contents could have somehow effected the shows finale? Unfortunately, that wasn't the case, the nearly-there concept mirrored the enjoyable yet unmemorable showcase from a pair of undoubtedly talented performers. —MB

Showing promise at this year's Sketchfest was Drew's Tumbler, a trio of women who have the acting chops and right amount of nuttiness to be a force to reckon with in festival's to come, even if some scenes did fall completely flat or felt not fully flushed out at times. A morning talk show devoted to crafting made perfect fun of women's programming while another on health insurance was achingly dull. A sketch set at an improv class hit a bullseye in its parody of our local comedy scene even if it struggled to find an ending while another featuring conjoined twins was skillfully executed and delightfully ridiculous. In the tradition of highly physical comedians who excel at lowbrow concepts, these funny ladies are on a roll (just like their skates in the show opener). —JAH

Friday, January 11

Thursday, January 10

Cell Camp formed in 2006, when the founding members were tasked with producing a sketch show as their final project in the Second City Training Center's writing program. They've continued on since then, and with an interesting tonal approach of adding a layer of dark humor to the sort of accessible premises seen on SC's main stages. The group is at its best when things get pitch black; the most memorable scene of the show featured a grieving mother, played by Marla Depew, who accidentally exposes herself during her son's funeral, which offered an interesting take on the desexualized, comedic (partial) nudity that's usually left to the dudes during these sort of mainstream-friendly shows. The rest of the show was adequately performed and written, but doesn't quite hold up when considering it in context of Sketchfest as a whole. —MB

Looking over my notes after seeing Butch LaRue, I struggled with deciphering something I'd scribbled at some point during the show. I don't remember writing "a sketch team for the Wrigleyville crowd," but it sure is a apt description for the team's fratty, Family Guy style penchant for safe button pushing. Their apparent lack of preparation resulted in stilted acting and confusing scenes (one sketch ended with unemployed character getting busted by his wife for sleeping with his secretary?), as well as tech issues both backstage and in the booth. Over the last week, I've repeatedly found myself empathetically frustrated for anyone who attempts to use Stage 733's horrible wireless microphones, which have, without fail, cut out every single time they've been used in a show. In an especially egregious scenario this time around, a character was frozen in place for nearly 30 seconds while actors struggled backstage to make the mic work properly for an overhead announcement that would wrap up the scene. Sure, they could have rolled with it a bit more nimbly, but they shouldn't have had to.  —MB

You either walked out of Two Bunnies Eating Flowers after the first ten minutes last night or you stayed for the entire performance and it maybe changed your life. How best to describe this trio of nutty absurdists and the ridiculous, explosive, shocking, confrontational, glitterbomb of a show they dropped on Sketchfest audiences last night? I don't even know where to begin. Two Bunnies Eating Flowers are comedy studies camrades Alex Hanpeter, Kyle Reinhard and Jude Tedmori and while I want to divulge every last detail of their expertly executed sketch revue Horses Aren't People, Fishes Aren't Dogs, I'm going to hold back in hopes they'll do a run here in Chicago this spring. Sufficed to say they are high energy, high integrity and 100% committed to their craft. Aside from cracking themselves up a couple times on stage, they were flawless. But if you must know what it is we lucky few witnessed last night at Stage 773's Cab theater, let's just say it was a fearless, bloody, full-frontal assualt on all senses that makes you want to leap out of your seat and start a revolution. I loved it hard. —JAH  

I may or may not have witnessed a prank marriage last night. Wildcard's rocky set was intruded upon by reality twice during their 45 minute performance, once early on by a group of vocal, drunk idiots in the front row who had no idea that everyone's pretty tired of reading about hecklers at this point, and again when a wedding scene climaxed with a recently ordained ensemble member breaking character and informing members Rachel LaForce and Greg Worsley that they've been legally wedded in real life, repeating "this is not a joke." While I want to believe it was just a well executed piece of sketch comedy, the palpable tension onstage, the frustrated tears from LaForce and absence of the team from the lobby after the show had me wondering if I'd seen something genuinely fucked up, or was just played by a clever scene that was twice as well acted and conceived as anything else the team had performed up to that point. —MB

Sunday, January 6

There were some genuinely funny lines and screwball inventiveness present in Mick & Weege Hit the Movies, but at times it got buried in material that was flavorless or done to death (I'm getting tired of parodies of movie trailers). The very competent Sherra Lasley was joined by Chris Blake in a two-person show that was augmented by supporting players. In one smart scene, Blake is very funny as the family dog and in another, Blake and Lasley break into joyous song in the back of the cab. But too often it felt like characters were weird for no reason and while there were several funny and pointed jabs at the movies, this was mostly low-brow schtick. —JAH

In a very promising early scene from Acid Reflux, a game of Super Password becomes the device through which a mother and father accidentally reveal family secrets to their children including cringe-worthy sexual escapades and the fact that their daughter is adopted. I wish all scenes had been this good. Mostly, this young ensemble leaned too much on heavy-handed acting and over-the-top premises and often the comic payoff just wasn't there. But there were some bright spots. A sketch about a blind date included a funny jab at Roosevelt University and a scene in which a boyfriend is put off by the open displays of affection from his girlfriend's family has been done before (Cam's mother in Modern Family), but at least it was grounded in reality. —JAH

Show #83 at last night's festival was the strange and cerebral duo Ray Bradgary. Based on their love of high-minded premises and inventive props, I would drop them into the "ones to watch" category. It's not that I loved the show, but I do think if they keep honing their craft they might have something interesting on their hands in a year or two. An opening rap number about having an average penis size included funny lines like, "Girl I'll never hurt you unless you're really dry," and a relationship scene set on an El track was full of sharp social satire. Meanwhile, a swipe at the Koch brothers included a funny appearance from Obama impersonator Patrick Rowland and a very funny Rube Goldberg device, but was muddled in its political commentary. Ditto a scene set on a space station that was inventively choreographed, but contained little point beyond that. Still, these guys were never once boring. —JAH