The Kids in the Hall: As Live As We’ll Ever Be Tour
June 4-5, 8pm. $49.50-$59.50. Massey Hall, 178 Victoria. 416-872-4255. www.ticketmaster.ca.
It would be very easy for the Kids in the Hall to fall back on the many seasons of material they turned out for CBC and HBO for this reunion tour. But if the opening sketch — a brainstorming session that goes horribly awry in classic Kids style for Kevin “always the victim” McDonald — is to be believed, this isn’t meant to be a nostalgia act.
Not that that stopped the graying troupe from rolling out fan favorites like horny freak of nature the Chicken Lady or that weird little kid Gavin, but they’ve come back in new sketches, propped up by some entirely fresh material that at its best recalls the Kids’ high absurdity heyday of almost 20 years ago.
This way we find out what happened to twittering office gals Kathy and Cathy (it ain’t pretty) while meeting new arrivals like Dave Foley’s time-traveling drunk and a familiar sort of superhero in the form of Bruce McCulloch.
Regrettably, some of the funniest new stuff has been on the internet for some time, so YouTube trawlers have already seen the opening bit though it, and the one about the secrets of an auto shop, are worth repeat viewings if only to see McDonald show off his mastery of polite, panicky horror.
Some scenes run long and a tad ragged — that dance number near the end didn’t amount to much — but watching them do their thing it’s clear that the Kids not only still work together like the gears of a fine watch, but that they’re having genuine fun at the same time. (McCullogh cracked up two or three times during the Wednesday night show. McKinney also had the giggles.)
And despite being on the road to old fogey-dom, they can still surprise and shock, whether it’s Buddy Cole sermonizing about Jesus’ social life or, to pick one deliciously deadpan line from Foley, acting out “the attempted statutory rape of a foreign exchange student.”