I didn't leave Sketch 22 laughing my head off. But I left thinking, which is really something for a sketch comedy show. Because this year's Sketch 22 operates on two completely different levels—both as a series of sketches and a meditation on the nature of humour.
We're set up for this from the start. The show begins with a sketch called Journey to the Centre of the Funny. The cast members are on a starship (with appropriately tacky costumes). They are looking for funny, but they keep being attacked by force fields that make them speak in puns, or limericks or…well, you get the point. From the first moment, they are asking questions about what funny means. And that places even the gross humour (of which there is plenty) in an interesting context.
Is Andrew Sprague drooling white goop all over his bib funny? Is it funny when we learn his character's name is Mr…No I can't say it. This is a family paper and it would ruin the joke. The point is, while a lot of people were laughing at that, I was thinking about why I wasn't.
Not that I didn't laugh. A sketch called Peter, Peter, starring a chicken, is brilliant And a sketch which features characters dressed up as famous Charlottetown landmarks (imagine Rob MacDonald as Owen Connolly) is great—especially in its second, video incarnation.
This is a group that, after all these years, knows what gets laughs. Local references? There are plenty of those. Sexual humour? Picture a guy with two hand puppets that are male and female gentilia. Rob MacDonald dressed up as a woman? They know we're gonna love it. In fact, the show ends with a musical comedy number that asks that very question—do you think this is funny—do you think that is—this and that being the comic devices they've used all evening.
By far and away the best parts of Sketch 22 this year were the videos. There are more of them than ever and their execution is great. A 007 take off (Racino Royale) with James Bond flying over Brackley Beach in a jet pack is incredible. And the group continues to mix video and live action in an imaginative way. Racino Royale starts on Brackley Beach and ends up on the stage, for example. And often jokes and themes from one sketch are picked up in another. In Sketchicef, two charities fight over which of them can use a sad sack case as their poster child. One of the groups kidnaps the sad sack. In a later sketch, we see them trying, hilariously and unsuccessfully, to get someone to pay ransom.
I will be the first to say that not everyone had the same cerebral reaction I did to the evening. Some were just there for the sex jokes or to see Rob in a dress. But I thought Sketch 22 took a lot of interesting chances this year and did a much better job of making sense of what the group is getting at.
It reminded me, in some ways, of a movie called The Aristocrats. You shouldn't see either Sketch 22 or The Aristocrats if you have a low (or even medium) tolerance for gross. But if you take the time to look below the surface of either, it might be your gray matter—and not just your funny bone—that's tickled.
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