SFist Reviews UCB ASSSSCAT at Sketchfest
Now that we're doing the occasional reviews, we've begun to notice how external things can sometimes color what we're reviewing. Call it the unreliable critical narrator. What we mean is that what how we perceive the thing we are reviewing is oftentimes affected by things we bring into the show with us. For instance, we gave a glowing review to a Radiohead show that several people told us was a very off night for the band. The thing about the review is that we hadn't seen them in almost five years so we were so happy to see them that they could have played two hours of experimental noise collages followed by a note for note rendition of their first album and we still would have enjoyed it
Which makes us wonder how much of a review we read is really what the critic thought or what kind of mood the critic is in. Think about it-- if you're in a good mood, you could enjoy almost anything. If you're in a bad mood, it's hard to shake that mood when you see something. If Mick LaSalle praises a movie, is it because he really enjoyed or was it because it was a beautiful day and he had just had a perfect cup of coffee? Or vice versa-- did he really pan something because it was bad or was it because he had just gotten into a fight with his wife and his boss yelled at him and it was like the fifth movie he had to see that week? Yes, a critic is supposed to be all zen-like and open minded when they're seeing something but we're human beings.
So what are we getting at? Merely that when we saw the s UCB ASSSSCAT show on Friday night we were just plain exhausted from the week and were barely able to stay awake. As excited as we were in seeing the show, we also had to deal with the fact that all we wanted to do by the time the show started was crawl into bed. It's hard to laugh at something when you're exerting most of your energy just make it to the end. So with all that said, we would have to say that we were disappointed in the show.
Last year, the UCB ASSSSCAT show was one of the best shows we ever saw-- music, theater, comedy, you name it. This year, the cast was a mainly different (the only one who appeared in both was Matt Besser) but we didn't think the quality would be altered that much. The monologist was Bob Odenkirk, David Cross' Mr. Show cohort, and Matt Walsh was part of the "Daily Show's" stable of mock correspondents and the star of the hilarious and barely watched "Dog Bites Man." But for whatever reason, we didn't think the show was that exceptional.
Now improv is a tricky thing. Do it right and it's brilliant- inspired stuff that has an energy that emanates from the stage into the audience as everyone realizes that they are onto something. Do it wrong and it could either be mildly amusing or not working at all. The show altered between mildly amusing and not working at all. What we mean is that when improv works, you could barely tell the difference between something written and planned and what you were seeing on stage. The comedy makes sense. If it's not going well, it has that searching quality, a group of people desperately trying to figure out something to get that spark lit. That's what the night's show was like-- even the halfway funny bits still seemed like comedy ideas that weren't quite working.
You could tell things were off because there were a lot of pauses and hemming and hawing. Nobody was quite sure how to kick things into a higher gear. Performers jumped in and out so quickly during the long form bits that a rhythm could never be established. Some of it could be because everybody wanted a piece of the pie, but we had a sense it was because a lot of the bits were just kind of dying on the vine and somebody felt they had to jump in and save it.
A symbol for all of this was in Bob Odenkirk's monologue. He asked for a category a couple of times but usually went off in completely different tangents. At one point, he tried to start something on a category that was given from the audience and he just gave up and told a story about doing Sketchfest a year ago. We won't say he had flop sweat but you could start seeing the pores open up.
As for the opening act, Straightjacket, they were as Bob described them-- a very unique voice. Basically, they're a British group of three kids who look barely out of school who filmed a whole bunch of skits. They didn't perform per se, but their clips were shown to the audience. They were actually pretty funny, going from straightforward comedic bits (a man calling a child abuse line because he felt his kids were abusing them) to silly bits (a modern day Jesus having a fake "Last Supper" because he missed "his lads") and Python-esque absurdity (a man calling into the police for a murder that isn't going to be committed). You can check their stuff out here.
Now again, we don't know what those who attended and were not half-asleep thought of the show. They could have enjoyed it immensely. We didn't but we could have seen the second coming of the Marx Brothers and would have still not enjoyed ourselves. But as reviewers, what are we supposed to say here? We could either lie and said we had a great time or pan it and make it seem like we were in a state of mind that could pan it. So we decided to be honest, to say that we didn't enjoy it and here's why and be totally honest about it. We hope that's enough.