There’s a none-too-subtle humble-brag in this West Coast show by The Second City. After their first proper sketch, the six cast members address the audience. Not to introduce themselves, mind you, but to boast of the company’s starry alumni: Gilda Radner, Tim Meadows, Chris Farley. It’s to let all assembled know exactly why these unknowns are now gracing the larger stage of one of the most important theaters in the US: We audience members are supposed to see The Next Big Thing.
We aren’t meant to merely watch these Midwestern performers show their talent, we’re supposed witness future Not-Ready-for-Primetime-Players in their infancy, radiant in a glow of nostalgia. The Chicago-based Second City employs the same shameless branding as The Groundlings and the Upright Citizens Brigade. All three are comedy company legends. (And all three have faced the same allegations).
Ham-fisted self-promotion aside, what can we say about the six performers (George Elrod, Chas Lilly, Phylicia McLeod, Cat Savage, Annie Sullivan, and Max Thomas) gathered for the season-ending show at the Berkeley Rep? Honestly, they’re pretty funny.
The half-dozen members we see in The Best of Second City (through Sun/28 at the Berkeley Rep) know how to mine laughs out of the audience. Over the course of nearly two hours, 24 scripted sketches, and a handful of improv exercises, we get to see some young ‘n hungry twenty-somethings try to entertain an audience of mostly-white Berkeley Boomers. (As a Black man in the nexus point between Gen-X and Millennials, my presence may have put the odds a bit more in the performers’ favor.)
As this is a “Best of” show, it’s always hard to say how these sketches played in their original contexts. What’s more, several of them have clearly been rewritten to be Berkeley-specific (or, at least, what a visitor thinks is Berkeley-specific), so there’s clearly going to be a change of flow in some cases.
Even the use of the Rep’s gigantic Roda Theatre may be changing things. The Roda is where the Rep world-premieres its mega-productions before they hit Broadway. It’s odd to see it try and resemble a black box just by hanging a black curtain as far downstage as possible. Take it from someone who’s not only seen countless shows on that stage, but has worked on it, too: it takes more than a curtain and spotlights to hide its size; and sketch works better with intimacy.
But I digress. All sketch writing is going to be hit-or-miss, and the work here is no different, “Best of” or not. We begin with a subtle piece about a woman (Annie Sullivan) convincing a tattooist (Chas Lilly) to break his “no Star Wars” rule by telling him that her intended tattoo of Grogu (“Baby Yoda”) is to spite her parents. Lilly and Sullivan both do nuance well, with the mustachioed former having a Steve Martin-esque ability to deliver every line somewhere between sincerity and condescension. Sullivan has an almost bait-and-switch ability to hide an over-the-top mania behind an unsuspecting demeanor, as she soon does in a melodramatic wine sketch with baby-faced George Elrod.
Those are amongst the stronger-written sketches, as is the Act II opener of Lilly as a tech CEO giving a keynote address until he’s sexually harassed by bro-ish audience members Sullivan and Cat Savage. Not so strong are sketches with a gay male couple (Sullivan and Phylicia McLeod) who seem disappointed that their live-in nephew (Elrod) isn’t partying the way they did at his age. Similarly, a robotaxi sketch, in which McLeod chats with the onboard AI (Elrod) goes on too long and doesn’t show off the two as well as the rest of the show. Though the weaker ones do make sketches like a drug-dealing driving instructor (Max Thomas) all the more funny.
If there was one piece that definitely sank, it was the pre-written/improv hybrid sketch in which Sullivan plays a hard-boiled author crafting a story around a participating audience member. On opening night, the troupe happened to choose a rather humorless fella in an orange Hawai’ian shirt, who came off as confrontational. He never smiled and frequently contradicted the troupe’s instructions, making it seem as if didn’t want to even be in the building. The performers were troopers and did what they could, but I wrote in my notes that I wished they’d have ended the sketch early or improved a way to switch this grouch with someone else.
Given how adept all six were at improv—both in this sketch and in the handful of improv games—they deserved someone who could appreciate the work they were putting into the bit.
One thing I certainly appreciated was the always-impressive Berkeleley Rep HVAC system. With mask-required COVID-safe shows limited only to Sundays and Tuesdays, it’s once again to the Rep’s credit that even a Wednesday night opening had enough air flow for a full house. Even with all the bare faces laughing hysterically, my Aranet4’s CO² readings hovered in the mid-600s the whole time, ending the show at 686ppm.
There’s a sketch in the second act where two parents (Thomas and McLeod) give their young daughter (Savage) the typical “we’ll support you, no matter what” spiel, only to be disgusted when she reveals she wants to be a comedian. It’s a quick sketch, maybe a minute-and-a-half, that benefits from the excellent timing of the trio onstage, the zinger sensibility of whomever wrote it, and the fact that nearly anyone who’s gone into the arts can relate. It was a definite highlight of the entire night (as was a fantastic Spirit Airlines sketch with Savage, Lilly, and McLeod).
As someone with an eye for sketch—hence my affinity for SF’s very own Killing My Lobster—I wouldn’t dare predict whether the six cast members of this show are destined for Adam Sandler-esque fame and fortune, but they’re an entertaining troupe on their own. Even as part of a promo tour for their company, there’s a talent that makes the show worth watching.
THE BEST OF THE SECOND CITY runs through July 28 at the Berkeley Rep. Tickets and further info here.
