Oddly on a Tuesday, the 10th, the Toronto Sketch Comedy Festival began its 5th season in three venues across the city. Taking place in the venerable comedic halls of The Second City, at theatre mainstay Passe Muraille, and the almost new, year-old Comedy Bar, 38 sketch crews from across the US and Canada, though heavily skewed by a majority of Toronto crews, began their 5 day (Nov. 10-15) barrage of sexual innuendo, physical humour, awkward situations, offensive lyrics, and generally ridiculous over-the-top humour. Four of the tropes are made up of U of T students and blogUT has made it our, honestly very easy mission, to track them all on stage. The four U of T groups are Statutory Jape, Skule Night (one guess on their faculty affiliation), The Boom and Shoeless.

Our mission started on Wednesday the 11th at Theatre Passe Murraille at the SketchFest Toronto Sampler #2 to see our goal, The Boom and Shoeless, as well as two other Toronto tropes, Flamingo Bandit and Raisin Gang. As I arrived I was pleasantly surprised to see an extremely busy box office. Since I am pretty much a newbie to the Toronto comedy scene it was great to discover that the state of the scene was good and healthy, even for aspiring comics. There was some decent merchandise — your typical buttons with the Sketchfest skewed pacman ($1) and new shirts with the festival marquee ($15) and the previous year’s version ($10), all available if you want to support the event.

The small to medium-ish venue was almost completely sold out with the exception of some balcony seats. Already the audience was lively and jonesing for a show, an atmosphere that was helped along by the fact that there was a cash bar in the theatre ($5 Steamwhistle, red/white wine), presumably so you can get drunk at the show to compensate for perhaps lackluster groups. Some of the balcony seats also were lucky enough to have tables, though no food.

The show started slightly late and began with the fest’s introductory video clip, which could be previously viewed online, although it has since been wisely removed as there was no way of stopping or muting the video, which got extremely annoying after repeated visits. Ironically, at the show the video had a tech glitch and was mute, creating a weird silence — never usually a good omen at a comedy show. However, in this case it did not foreshadow disaster. This led into a short host segment where it was obvious who had Facebooked all their friends to come, as the Raisin Gang and Shoeless both got massive applause.

The first group on was Flamingo Bandit, which gets automatic points with me for their name. What can I say? I’m easily won over by random names, especially when its matched with a subtly coordinated wardrobe of pink accents. The two comics, Derek and Tessie, were a good pair with natural comedic chemistry.  From skit to skit the two took turns in playing the straight man. They did a total of 8 short skits with some extremely short one-joke wonders lasting a mere 1 or 2 minutes with time enough only for a short setup and punchline. Some were successful, others not so much, but neither kind overstayed their welcome and were over before anyone minded.

One of the more memorable skits was a longer one which took place at a bad magic show in Dufferin Mall. Those who know the less-than-stellar experience that is Dufferin Mall will instantly and painfully know the quality of the magician’s act. Hilarious synchronous dance interludes between his pathetic, groan-inducing tricks were a highlight.

One of the shorter segments was a very brief skit about Vincent Van Gogh giving his ear as a present to his girlfriend, who freaks out. Another was about a girl whose name is a spice (Rosemary), which fell flat, but a more topical one on flu shots being given with an inappropriate sexual questionnaire beforehand was predictable but still got good laughs.

Their finale included a somewhat-clever reversal of sex roles which ended with an almost-naked Derek on stage. All in all, the Flamingos were solidly and consistently amusing but didn’t garner any laugh-out-loud reactions. They failed to steal my laughing bone, at least.

Next up was the first U of T group, The Boom, who were much larger at 8 members. Their show began with a little girl’s beauty pageant talent contest with the fairly cliched premise of a little girl making obscene jokes as her talent. It was still effective if only for the shock value of hearing c**k yelled repeatedly, and due to the whole-heartedness with which the comics sold their parts The daughter seemed very familiar and I concluded that she was one of the judges regularly on Much Music’s Video On Trial.

Most of The Boom’s skits were much longer than the one-shot jokes of the Flamingos and were heavily carried by shock value and grossness. A less successful one involved sex with a banana peel. Most were pretty creative in that they were outrageous in unexpected ways. The funniest skit — though not the most original  — involved two shy Grade 8 students emulating their rap idols and spewing out a rap that was massively offensive but also hilarious. I totally applaud the well-written and clever lyrics (they really shouldn’t be repeated here), which also got a great audience response.

Another great skit was a Salem witch hunt in which the witches were replaced by dragons that had bodily fluids (spit, get your mind out of the gutter) and raw egg-eating. Generally, The Boom set was shorter in total with fewer but longer sketches that were hit or miss, but the ones that were funny were very, very funny. Due to the largeness of the group and the smaller number of  skits, there was less of a chance to see the individual actors in many roles , This would have been interesting as was the case with the Flamingos, and it seemed that some members hardly got any significant stage time, although as to be expected in a showcase format. I would be interested in seeing a longer set by them.

The third group was the Raisin Gang, with 4 members. They started with a fairy tale set skit where a valiant but one-armed knight saves a princess, ultimately leading to marriage. Fast forwardeing to years post-wedding, the couple had grown to be a bitter and feuding couple in a family sitcom, similar to the style of Married with Children. The skit while fairly entertaining had few genuine good laughs.

The next skit was their funniest and involved a high school sex ed. class in which a rage management teacher was being evaluated by the principal. It had plenty of funny awkward moments, sexually inappropriate jokes and multiple tangents, some pretty predictable but well-executed. With a quick blink you’d miss the Michael Jackson molestation joke on lined paper.

The third and last skit was based in an opera house and was fairly tedious, boring and unsuccessful. It seemed to just ramble on and the final reveal that created a cool juxtaposition was too long in coming and too awkwardly matched such that people had stopped caring long before. Raisin Gang had much more complex sketches than the other tropes, which was a strength and weakness since they were more interesting and in depth but, well, less funny. In my humble opinion they had great potential but had yet to work out the execution. Interesting stories should not come at the expense of humour, at least at a comedy show.

The final act was Shoeless, our second U of T trope. At 10 members, they were the largest group. They were the only trope to work in the fact that the Wednesday of the show was Remembrance Day and started the show with a quick skit about a prostate exam being interrupted mid… well, grasp, by a moment of silence for remembrance. It was well done and garnered laughs from the crowd. The second skit was a a school recital in which Shoeless used their large membership to good use, with almost all lining up facing the audience singing a version of the national anthem that was chaotic, funny, kid-like. They were able to get multiple laughs out of simultaneous action and physical humour from different members of the group, including one ‘kid’ constantly massively waving to his parents throughout the anthem.

This led into a longer segment still at the recital, where only one member was on stage, badly playing an actual keyboard for an extended amount of time. This created an awkwardness similar to that in The Office, resulting in the piano girl crawling off stage in shame, eliciting a lot of laughter at the discomfort.

Interspersed between the longer skits, Shoeless did a series of different “caught at weird moments during Remembrance day moment of silence” pieces, which were great at being quick humour that helped transition between the longer sketches.

The least successful sketch of theirs involved the cancellation of a blind date by the person who was set up to go by a couple. This led to a third wheel situation. A lot of the humour didn’t convince due to the third wheel being less than believable, or at least not executed believably.

In the end, the trope finished on a high note in a sketch with a record shop clerk who could identify the most obscure songs by a couple of notes. However, he failed to identify Michael Jackson’s Thriller. The scene was executed a lot better than explained here. It also involved a very faithful reenactment of the Thriller zombie dance by the whole trope which, of course, was appropriately received with applause.

To wrap up, the show was very enjoyable and comparable in price ($12) and time as a movie. I would highly recommend anyone who likes comedy to attend one of the remaining shows, as the fest is on till the 15th. Support local comedy and your fellow U of T students!

This entry was posted on Thursday, November 12th, 2009 at 4:52 pm and is filed under Arts, Entertainment, Events, Wish You Were Here. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.