THE
BEST OF THE BEST SKETCH FEST 2006
SKETCH
ARTISTS DRAW NOTHING BUT LAUGHS
Monday, August 14th, 2006
Grant Butler - Editor Of The
A&E
If you're a regular watcher of "Saturday Night Live," you
may think you know that sketch comedy is all about: A group
of funny men and women take a current political, consumer
or pop-cultural topic and riff on it for three to five
minutes in an irreverent, theatrical way. Trouble is, if
you are only familiar with what passes for sketch comedy on
late-night TV, you may not realize that when it's done by
the best performers, it can actually be funny, too.
For sketch comedy that's truly comic, you would be far
better off catching any of the 11 national troupes that
were in town for this past weekend's two-day Best of the
Best Sketch Fest, hosted by Blue Door Productions at
Artists Repertory Theatre, than any TV show. Over the
course of a dozen-plus hours of laughter at this fourth
annual event, it became abundantly clear that such
companies as Portland's The 3rd Floor, Los Angeles' Troop!,
and New York City's MEAT and Elephant Larry are where
sketch comedy's fresh ideas are percolating.
And there could hardly be anything fresher than the two-man
Team Submarine, which opened the festival Friday night.
Chicago's Steve O'Brien and Nate Fernald have been
collaborating for less than a year, but their briskly paced
skewering of racism and the sometime fallacies of
friendship revealed instant chemistry. One bit involving a
human office automaton and his Klingon manager connected
with the audience, as did another sketch about a
half-man/half-mannequin searching for social acceptance.
A stripped-down version of another Chicago troupe -- Cupid
Players -- highlighted a different sort of sketch comedy.
Using the conventions of musical theater, they blew apart
everything from complicated dating to the universality of
some bathroom bodily functions. But with only six of the
dozen-plus players making the trip to the festival, the
ensemble's work had a minimalist feel, hinting at what this
group might do with all hands on deck.
The all-female group MEAT attracted one of the festival's
biggest crowds, but most of the material was a rehash of
their performance from last year. Another New York group,
Trophy Dad, made its festival debut with a tight mix of
live sketches and videotaped bits. One taped sequence
deliciously sent up both the challenges of parenting and
creepy 1960s horror flicks.
Saturday night offered an even wilder time, especially with
the brilliant 40,000-stories-high roller-coaster ride
depicted by L.A.'s wickedly surreal Troop! Three of that
company's core members, assisted by other Sketch Fests
artists, provided the high point for this year's
proceedings when they acted out what it would be like to
ride on an amusement park attraction that carries you
literally into the stratosphere. After completing a
complicated series of dialogue and choreography, the three
actors then performed the entire bit in reverse order,
never missing a beat. Brilliant, unbelievable stuff.
Saturday also featured the one-man All-American Push-Up
Party. Comic Dusty Warren, who has performed at Sketch Fest
before with three now-disbanded troupes, showed a razor
sharp sense of timing that made things like the prospect of
prison rape an unlikely subject for laughs. And there was
the Boston University group Slow Children at Play, which
was the festival's sole sold-out performance, offering a
glimpse at where sketch comedy might go in the hands of
college students.
The festival's finale belonged to Portland's The 3rd Floor,
celebrating its 10-year anniversary with a collection of
its greatest hits. Featuring 17 current and former members,
the 90-minute retrospective was a lengthy one, lasting well
past 2 a.m. -- a bit much after performances by five
previous troupes. But goodness, how lucky we've got it
here.
Troop! leader Kevin Chesley introduced our hometown
company, noting how it had rapidly become one of the top
sketch comedy groups to watch on the national scene. And
The 3rd Floor's performance lived up to the introduction.
Especially in a short sequence in which a tough-talking elf
manager tries to convince a quartet of Santa's toy-makers
that they'd better shape up, or be ready to hit the North
Pole highway.
Sound a bit familiar? If you watch "Saturday Night Live,"
you might have seen it already. Trouble is, it's a script
that The 3rd Floor presented years before it showed up on
late-night TV from the Not Ready For Prime-Time Players.
Hmmm, a case of purloined sketch comedy? That would prove
that with sketch comedy, even high-paid Big Apple comics
are looking to the Rose City for inspiration.