| Cabaret Tedium | | Print | |
| Written by Jeremiah Albers | |||
| Thursday, 25 October 2007 | |||
 Every Tuesday night at the Bayside Inn on
Pleasure House Road there is comedy.
Or, at least, there is a group of young upstart comedians who are
workshopping comedy. Unsuccessfully.
Cabaret Delirium as it is titled is an evening where a tight-knit group of friends gather together, largely for the purpose of making themselves giggle. I think I cracked a smile once. Though it was probably not for the right reasons. Funny or not, though, Cabaret Delirium claims to be the Seven Cities' longest-running independent comedy night. I could not, in my research, verify that assertion one way or the other. Not that it really matters. As long as they don't claim to be the Seven Cities' funniest comedy night, then we can still have some faith in the concept of truth in advertising.
At ten o'clock, with the movie over, Booker took the stage and began the comedy. Mr. Booker himself seemed to be an aging example of the type of Phish-loving new world hippies people of my age went to high school with. He furthered this image by ranting over a broad, and largely incomprehensible, series of current and not-so-current events. Booker, like most of the other comedians who performed, has mistaken haughty intellectual self-righteousness for comedy. He and others assume that bringing up a political subject is the same as telling a joke about it. It is not. It is also not wise to speak on newsworthy subjects unless you have your facts straight. When Mr. Booker attempted a non-joke about the August bridge collapse in Minneapolis, he incorrectly stated that the collapse occured in Maine. This incorrect assertion calls Mr. Booker's truthiness into question. I fear I have been somewhat harsh with Mr. Booker, but as the emcee and organizer of the evening, he comes off as though he is a messianic figure in local comedy, or at least thinks he is. He is also the only comedian of the evening who wasn't obviously using the forum to workshop new jokes and subject matter. The first workshopping comedian of the evening was George Smith, a fresh-faced lad who reminded me a lot of what Harry Potter might be like if he were a pledging a fraternity. He had the strong notion to do his set entirely on the subject of Homearama. Unfortunately, there were no jokes, just observations about how it is a tacky example of American consumer culture. There's that haughty intellectual self-righteousness again. The idea of a series of riffs on Homearama, the loacal builders' showcase, is a good foundation on which to build a strong stand-up comedy routine. However,
Ty Bliss took the stage, and his routine seems to best illustrate Cabaret Delerium's biggest problem. The evening of comedy is insular. The comedians are all friends and so they do comedy for each other, and not for anyone else who may be there. Mr. Bliss's long routine about fellow comedian Brendan Kennedy's new job at Portfolio Weekly and the editor he works for is material that only Bliss and Kennedy and friends could find funny. His material about homosexuality and school rampage shootings was unnecessarily hateful. As the evening wore on, and the comedians imbibed more and more beer, the program largely became an audience participation experience for them, which made me feel even more segregated from the comedy than I already was. Constantly, routines would devolve into inside conversations about a recent trip some of them had taken to do comedy in New York City. Constantly, I rolled my eyes and hoped they would get the evening on track again. Mr. Kennedy, of whom I spoke earlier, did a routine that was mostly about his own inherent homophobia and misogyny. Not that those subjects can't be funny. In the hands of Mr. Kennedy they were not.
The best comedian of the evening was Jason Kypros, whose material about SCHIP (the State Child Health Insurance Program) was certainly the funniest of the evening. He seemed to know better than anyone else what stand up comedy actually is, and his jokes were the most tightly constructed. Occasionally, his comedy devolved into cliche, and much of it didn't work, but it wasn't nearly as terrible as some of the others. Mr. Kypros is also green, but is working at a much higher level than any of his cohorts at Cabaret Delirium. He is truly a big fish in a little pond here, and he should try to apprentice with professional, as opposed to amateur, comedians. Other comedians were, and are, frequently showcased at Cabaret Delirium: Clarence Wilks, Adam Lee, Regi Elliot, Big Brown, Barry Jones, Matt Cole, and Ivan Martin also regularly appear. I cannot recommend to anyone that they attend Cabaret Delirium, unless they really like the idea of mediocre local comedians doing hours of material that is barely fleshed out. Because the evening is a workshop more than a true comedy night, I will conclude this review with a little feedback for the comedians. First of all, newsdropping is not jokes. Second, jokes that end with the comedian saying things like "You had to be there I guess," or "...and the punchline is..." probably are not going to work. Three, your comedy will improve a hundredfold if you allow the audience to think you're funny rather than earnestly attempting to convince them you're funny. Fourth, mentioning controversial subjects and using foul language is not the same as comedy. Last, and most importantly, while there should be truth in comedy, truth does not necessarily equal comedy. I certainly hope the comedians will take this feedback and run with it. From seeing them perform, however, I have a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach that tells me they won't.
THE FACTS:
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Mr.
Smith's routine played more as though he were summarizing a Wikipedia article
on the subject than telling jokes about it. 