Friday night I attended RAPA theater’s comedy showcase A Night of Laughs, featured a sampling of several of the
Fringe Festival’s comedy acts. Despite the name of the program, however, I was
disappointed to find that the laughs were relatively few and far between.
Maybe it’s just my comedic
tastes. I prefer the more risqué, raunchy, and downright inappropriate when it
comes to humor — think Louis CK or Jim Jefferies. The show at RAPA last night
was relatively tame by my standards, and featured jokes largely of the PG-13 variety.
The show’s host, Peter, started
things off well with a strong bit and some hilarious jokes about penis pictures.
However, the show took a drastic dip in quality right after that point. The
second act was an incoherent bit from Judy Clay, who rambled on about
everything from parking spaces to Syria. The routine lacked truly funny moments,
and the audience was uncomfortably quiet throughout.
Next up was the comedy-rap duo Garden
Fresh. This was a lighthearted act featuring two white middle-aged rappers who
poked fun at the current trends of the genre. Instead of rapping about street
cred, hos, and money, this duo spits lines about moral goodness, the importance
of saying please and thank you, as well as their love of water and milk. The
act was amusing, but didn’t garner more than a smirk from me.
The next act of the night
featured Rochester improv-comedy troupe Nuts and
Bolts, which started to pick up the show. Improv is
hard and you never know what you are going to get, but this troupe was able to
create some funny moments and get the audience involved.
The fourth act featured New
York City sketch-comedy duo Kirsten O’Brien and Evan Zelnick.
These two relied on a blend of video, animation, and physical comedy in their
performance. It was over the top, boisterous, and ridiculous. The pair impressed
in their performance ability and displayed a wide range of theatrics. The
performance was filled with energy and featured everything from mock fighting
and dry humping, to a giant cloud rollerblading around stage pretending to be
the weather. While at times I found this show a bit much, there were some
genuinely funny moments, such as a unique sexual take on an age-old argument.
Who came first, the chicken or the egg?
Finally there was Matt Griffo, who in my opinion stole the show. Just at the
moment when I was starting to get bored, Griffo’s
raunchy musical comedy injected just the right dose of inappropriateness the
show had been missing. Griffo is a charismatic and
talented performer and his songs are risqué and push the comedic envelope into
more daring grounds. For his final number Griffo
played a hilarious, downright explicit, gay love song to a heterosexual middle-aged
man in the audience who was there with his wife. It was the only time I truly
laughed out loud the whole show.
This article appears in Sep 18-24, 2013.
Nuts and Bolts has it’s own 60 minute show this friday night at RAPA at 9:30. you should come out to see the whole thing