Shortest is often the sweetest for sketch comedy.
Even on the main purveyor of the genre, NBC’s “Saturday Night Live,” wit suffers frequently for lack of brevity.
More frankly put, even the best ideas prove difficult to sustain. Writers or performers hit on a comic thought, whether a different angle of examining a situation, a spoof of a personality or current event, or some escalating domestic fracas, and after their opening gambit, they run out of material. They’re like many partisan political policies. They go way beyond the point at which they should end.
Chicago’s Second City has been a primary feeder to “Saturday Night Live.” Compare the two entities’ lists of alumni, and you’ll see a lot of matches.
Having lived in Chicago, I am aware of what Second City can accomplish. Its theater is on North Avenue now, but I remember walking up its previous location, on North Wells Street, laughing and repeating quips with friends who themselves were echoing some choice lines from the night’s show.
Little of that spirit or level of humor is evident from the touring troupe now performing in “Second City Comedian Rhapsody” at the Bristol Riverside Theatre, where there’s a paucity of deadpan and a plethora of “dead on arrival.”
Comedy in general, and sketch comedy in particular, is difficult. The topical goes stale fast. The typical has been done so many times, a fresh take is a rare commodity.
What can’t happen is for comedy to be taken for granted. Second City can afford an attitude akin to, “We are who we are, among the best in the business, so whatever we do is going to work and be hilarious.”
Yet that was the exact impression left, to one extent or another, by Rich Alfonso, Kennedy Baldwin, Anna Bortnick, Karl Bradley, Claire Favret, and Ross Taylor on opening night in Bristol.
Being frank again, the only one of this cast I’d want to see again is Alfonso, the one who put out the most effort and was most eager to entertain rather than walking through scenes with little commitment in false assurance the material, lame more times than not, would do the job of an actor.
So much was disappointing, I began to pity the cast and, even more, Ken Kaissar, who like me, is a fan of Second City from his tenure in Chicago. The troupe was brought to Bristol in good faith — I was eager to see them — but their show failed on several levels, the most basic being actors who are so accustomed to their material, they stopped considering how to play it to the house.
Alfonso aside, if Baldwin, Bortnick, Bradley, Favret, and Taylor want food for thought, they should cogitate on why the most sparkling personality to appear on the Bristol stage on opening night was a Latina woman brought from the audience to participate in a sketch about immigration.
She and Alfonso brought life to a proceeding that kept dimming the lights on Radcliffe Street.
To illustrate the show business savvy of the touring company, none of them bothered to ask the woman her name or give her a moment of special applause. She was just a cog in their assembly line, even though she and Alfonso, who built a happy rapport, saved a chunk of the day.
The woman was bright. Working with her, Alfonso was bright. Their scene, one of the better comic conceptions of the night to begin with, only pointed to what was wrong with the bulk of the performance.
Not everything failed, and some bits had potential.
Returning to the maxim that shortest is sweetest, the most successful riffs were a comic equivalent of a minute waltz, cursory exchanges that twisted a common situation or led to an unexpected answer or interpretation.
“Second City Comedian Rhapsody” began with a small collection of these, and they looked to start a momentum. Even as I wondered if the cast could fill an evening with these types of rimshots, I enjoyed their ironic turnabouts and was grateful when a new series of them emerged at intervals between extended skits.
Then, of course, there are bound to be some good ideas for sustained comedy.
The best in Second City’s opening night repertoire centered around an actor — Alfonso again! — who is attacked by weapon-wielding thugs outside a theater and defends himself, not with jiu jitsu or ken po, but with theatrical fight techniques.
The bit was a good send-up of the careful moves actors are taught to convey realistic but safe stage combat. Alfonso is hilarious standing at a distance while miming a sock to the jaw, a kick to the crotch, or a chop that breaks an arm and forces as assailant to drop a knife or gun.
Laughs build as Alfonso wards off every assault with his Rick Sordelet training, Sordelet being a famous theatrical fight choreographer.
The sketch has only one problem. You may have guessed it. It outwore its welcome.
Originality, a sharp concept, and, for once, excellent execution gave way to tedium as momentum stopped building, and the audience was faced with more of the same.
The quality of the gambit didn’t flail. Its novelty did. It was seen, it was understood, it was appreciated. It was time to move on.
And Second City didn’t.
If continuing past a logical, satisfactory end damaged a flourishing piece, think what overkill did to material that never took off in the first place.
The persistent reason for that inability to launch a sketch from concept to hilarity can be summed up in two words — old hat. A scene between permissive parents and a child lacking in respect, or rebelling from the ease with which she can get away with practically anything, seemed shopworn, in dire need of whisker-trimming. Other domestic scenes seemed equally rehashed with nothing new.
Improvisational scenes were no more inspired. Ross Taylor had a knack for firing off a good line or two, but in general, both the improvs and the set material looked “the same as we did yesterday.”
They had no oomph. Wit was entirely absent. A good moment, a sharp riposte was a one-time-only affair. Nothing built from it.
Perhaps the most disturbing problem, considering comedy is the business and subject here, is the inattention to timing and, more, to diction.
Lines were delivered slackly. There never seemed to be a point to a phrase that might earn a laugh if said with clarity and conviction. The Second City presentation in general was lazy and sloppy.
Some lines were lost entirely by lack of emphasis. Character creation was minimal — Alfonso excepted again — as if the company were doing you a favor going through their paces.
Second City should promise better. Bristol Riverside Theatre deserves better. Anne Libera is the credited director, but I wouldn’t want to bet on the last time she saw the production. The sad part is Bristol artistic directors Ken and Amy Kaissar prove over and over again how adept they are at making the comic comic. Being frank one more time, I kept hoping Ken would jump on stage and say, “Try this.”
Of course, he can’t. It would be impolite not to mention unprofessional in a way he’d never consider. But I was hoping.
Second City Comedian Rhapsody, Bristol Riverside Theatre, 120 Radcliffe Street, Bristol, Pennsylvania. Through Sunday, June 2. Show times are 7:30 p.m. Wednesday and Thursday, 8 p.m. Friday and Saturday, 2 p.m. Wednesday and Saturday, and 3 p.m. Sunday. $15 to $60. www.brtstage.org or 215-785-0100.
