Review - Montreal Sketch Comedy Festival, Thursday May 22

I attended the Best of Montreal Night for the third annual Sketch Comedy Festival at Theatre Ste. Catherine. To sum up the whole night I can say I was pleasantly and vaguely entertained the whole evening. Nothing was fall down funny….or laugh out loud funny but I had a nice warm feeling of amusement for most of the night.

Uncalled For is a great little troupe: lightning fast timing lots of throwaway verbal jokes. The sketches are fast and short and bleed into each other with some of the best flow of any show I’ve seen in a long time. However the sketches are a little bit unrewarding and the comedy depends too much on wacky characters in wacky situations instead of plot, situation, or character. The troupes background as an improv group is betrayed by the nagging feeling I had while watching them that many of the jokes they were throwing out were some stock lines from other routines.

The Best Friends Club are four young men onto something with their expert character portrayals and super short sketches. The only problem is the sketches build up then end without much payoff. They feel a little restrained.

The final act of the night was stand up comic Rodney Ramsay’s multimedia Bad Publicity. Mr. Ramsay presented three digital shorts with a stand up comedian between one and a comedy musician between the other. The digital shorts can be watched at his website they’re fast and sharp (have I mentioned how happy I was with the lengths of all the sketches of the night) and a little transgressive. The alt variety show feel of Bad Publicity with its different mediums is something I’d like to check out for a full performance of.