This hour has two comedians

2009/06/30

Mashing up comedy with issues of the day, the monthly Panel Show puts two straight guests in the punditry ring with a pair of improv-ers, in character as recent newsmakers. Thursday saw Coyne and Montgomery, a writer for CBC's The Hour, book-ended by Sam Kalilieh as alleged Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and fellow Bad Dog regular Jan Caruana as Frau Barbel Schreiber, the high-rent wife of Karlheinz.

Work, in progress

2009/06/24

Though it previously made its home at the Tim Sims and at Second City proper, Bruce Hunter's The Workshop has settled, for now at least, at Bad Dog Theatre. His well-regarded weekly experiment in long-form, sort of a skunkworks on stage, sprung from the classes Hunter used to teach while at Second City and is now part of the Saturday lineup at the improv house, running indefinitely into the summer.

Growth spurt for sketch-com

2009/06/17

Has it been a year already since the first Sketch ComAgeddon, and five since the debut of its mothership, the Toronto Sketch Comedy Festival? Apparently so, say organizers. The sketch-com competition not only survived its first year to come back for a second, but has hit a growth spurt.

Carol Burnett @ Massey Hall, June 12

2009/06/15

One by one, from the floor and from the nose-bleeds, adoring fans asked the showbiz icon questions ranging from “What was it like working with Walter Matthau?” to “Can I show you the tattoo of you that I got?”

Lie back and think of Texas

2009/06/10

Chris Trew — purveyor of air sex, which is like air guitar, except instead of pretending to play "Sweet Child O’ Mine," someone gets on stage and gives his or her best porn-worthy phantom humping to an invisible paramour — wants to be clear about one thing. It’s not that he’s against people acting out sex with invisible farm animals, per se — it’s just that he’s seen it so many times, it doesn’t immediately impress him.

Theatre of cruelty

2009/06/03

Even by the high standards set by real Japanese game shows, the competition known (for simplicity's sake) as "Dim Sum" at this year's Combustion Festival at Comedy Bar was both weirdly cruel, and cruelly weird.

911 is a joke

2009/05/27

Morgan Jones Phillips' comedy isn't so much "black" as it's red — red like arterial blood, pink like a collapsed lung, and whatever color best represents intestines that have sprung loose from some poor sap's stomach. Drawing on his five years as an EMT, Phillips cheerfully handles some grim and squishy material to tell the true stories that make up his one-man show, Emergency Monologues.

WAT Team

2009/05/20

The media lavished attention on the first We Ain't Terrorists comedy show, which happened to coincide with the 2006 war in Lebanon, the family homeland of comic Dave Merheje. He came back for a second, sharing the bill along the way with Pio Modi, Sabrina Jalees and others but almost bailed on the third because, let's face it, the heyday of terror-themed comedy tours ended on Inauguration Day.

The reluctant promoter

2009/05/13

For the previous three installments of his standup showcase, Dan Woodrow relied mainly on Facebook; word of mouth though star power came into play too. The show looks to put rising comics alongside established pros, and for its fourth go-around will be back at Comedy Bar with Jon Dore atop the lineup, joined by other locals like Alex Pavone, Ryan Maglunob and Daryn Jones of MTV Canada.

Big win for Little

2009/05/06

About halfway through Yuk Yuks' Great Canadian Laugh-Off it was clear that the oversized $25,000 cheque would be hoisted a Mark: either Halifax sketch-and-standup hyphenate Mark Little or local lad Mark Forward, who came on strong early in the show, getting big laughs from the Sunday night crowd with his raspy delivery and rewarding, risky bits about the cold-blooded murder of imaginary wildlife.

Poundstone picks up the pieces

2009/04/29

It's been several years, but not so many that Paula Poundstone's 2001 arrest for driving while intoxicated with minors in the car, which included being charged with performing unspecified "lewd acts" on a young girl, has faded from memory. Rather, her 30-year career is still in recovery mode, and one would expect the subject of young'uns to be something of a sore point. Not so: Poundstone is open and matter-of-fact about her past troubles and her road back to the stage.

Black out

2009/04/22

Longtime stand-up and Daily Show mainstay Lewis Black tries to keep his temper in check

Norm MacDonald @ Yuk Yuks, April 18

2009/04/20

You thought the SNL vet had lost it? Think again

The fine art of WTF?

2009/04/15

Seattle-area sketchers The Cody Rivers Show hope you'll try to keep up with their bewildering comedy

Laughter, she wrote

2009/04/08

Smart scripting and a Bollywood big finish mark the latest effort from local all-female sketch troupe She Said What

The-Not-Ready-for-Hard-Time Players

2009/04/01

Ten-member troupe The Boom make a point of traveling and playing odd venues — whether outside Toronto or down into the US — in addition to their regular appearances at Supermarket.

Brian Regan plays dumb

2009/03/25

Brian Regan has been doing comedy for a long time, on the road all but nonstop since the early 90s — building a mostly observational act that's as safe as a Nerf ball, clean as a new bar of soap.

Jon Lovitz: starting over with stand up

2009/03/18

If Jon Lovitz had a dime for every time one of us imitated the sly, nasal "Yeaahhh" of his pathological-liar character Tommy Flanagan, he'd be a very rich man, with no need to do those Subway ads. Instead, work has grown a little scarce since his heyday on Saturday Night Live — hence, his recent turn to stand-up.

0% Down, 100% Screwed

2009/03/11

Second City's new revue wisely opens with a nod to the over-coverage and dubious finger-pointing that has followed the world financial meltdown, but things go south after that, into a slump from which it never entirely recovers.

Laughing all the way to the poor house

2009/03/04

Despite a fondness for gambling and being an actor, Marty Adams — a mainstage cast member at Second City, whose new revue 0% Down, 100% Screwed opens this week — says that so far, knock on wood, the recession hasn't hit his wallet too hard. Though he did recently lose his shirt to a casino.

Radio gag-gag

2009/02/25

The hard part about interviewing comedians is getting them to stop being comedians and carry on an actual conversation like normal civilians. It's a lesson the trio behind Corktown Radio have spent the last year or so learning, as they've podcasted 24 episodes of their show from the backroom at the Dominion on Queen.

Mocking southerners — from a safe distance

2009/02/18

The sophisticates of the city never tire of looking down at the supposed rubes of the country and the south. Which brings us to the Hee Haw Hour, an open-ish mic effort by Stephanie Kaliner and Rob Norman held together by their high-energy hosting and the always reliable mocking of illiterate, moonshine-swilling cousin-lovers.

Masterpiece Improv

2009/02/11

For most folks in the laugh trade, the last thing anyone wants to hear is silence. But this improv troupe is not afraid to let a scene go quiet.

Bon voyage for Bull Hooey

2009/02/04

With founding member Inessa Frantowski headed for L.A., this wiggy duo — defined by sketches about relationships gone flat — is itself headed for a break up.

First past the post

2009/01/28

Comic Aziz Ansari is so over race issues — unlike most of America