A pervasive undercurrent of anxiety runs through the new Second City mainstage revue as a mostly fresh cast tries to figure out the role of progressive sketch comedy within the aggressive landscape of Trump 2.0. A version of this uncertainty has afflicted this once supremely confident comedy institution since Trump 1.0, of course, but it has only intensified. You can see it right there in the show’s title: “This Too Shall Slap.”
Is this cast taking aim at those who argue some version of “keep your head down until things change,” by insisting that the current damage requires resistance? Are they the slappers? Or the slapped? Or, to go with the slang version of the word, are they hoping for the best?
Their show, directed by Jen Ellison, surely suggests all four of those views are in play and it’s an interesting watch, especially when the cast reaches out to a visitor-heavy audience with members who might actually have voted for the current president, or are feeling waaaaay less outrage, at least after a couple of beers. On opening night on Thursday, this was manifest in a small piece of improv within a heavily scripted show, improv being risky these days. A guy in the front row was asked about the most difficult about being a man — a pretty standard prompt for humility within this cast’s worldview. There was a long pause. Finally, the man spoke: “I’ve got nothing,” he said.
To the cast’s great credit, they went with the bit and brought it into their fine finale. And I watched the guy enjoying himself just fine.
But it was emblematic of the profound ambivalence that Second City shows have developed not just towards their audiences but also within the development of material that they control themselves. The worst moment of this show is actually a song where everyone sings “we’re living in a dictator nation,” not because that’s untrue, necessarily, but because it’s not very funny to stand on a stage and say so.
Better moments flow when the cast turns their attention to their nerdy selves. Highlights of “This Too Shall Slap,” which features the return of Adonis Holmes, Hannah Ingle, Jordan Stafford and Adisa Williams alongside mainstage debutants Bill Letz and Leila Gorstein, include a hilarious sketch about just how anxiety-inducing going to restaurants has become: the expensive menu, the conspicuously consuming friend who orders the seafood tower and golden crusted lamb and then expects to split the bill, the curiously authoritarian waitstaff — just the trauma of the whole thing. I also got a huge kick out of a spectacular Act 1 closer set in an anger-management class that falls apart when everyone plays musical chairs. The massively talented Holmes plays a character having so visceral a meltdown that you can hear his howl all across the theater. “I push the shopping cart, it does not push me,” he repeats. Fabulous. That’s one for the “Best of Second City” shows. But this crew is so into the comedy of counseling and therapy, they did much the same again in a sketch in Act 2, with diminishing returns.
Letz makes an auspicious mainstage debut, and is a name to watch. He’s as if you crossed John Belushi with Jack Black and Evan Mills, the most recent Second City breakout performer. Letz is a physically and emotionally pliant but also a verbose actor of great versatility, able to play a standard Second City dad and Chicag’ow type, but also a neurotic (lots of call for that in this show) and a dweeb and, well, whatever gets thrown his way.
He’s very funny indeed in a scene wherein we find a podcaster, incapable of not podcasting while in in therapy. (You see what I mean about anxiety? Everywhere.)
As usual, Stafford has some moments too; he’s a slow-burn, gentle kind of performer but one with impeccable timing, able to slink into a scene and then light it up.
With her 1970s ‘do and jumpsuit, Ingle is both funny and nicely out there too, and just when you think you have gotten to know how Gorstein looks and what she does, she has a big surprise teed up. Also worth watching. She’ll find her mainstage way, I think, given time.
We’ll all find our way eventually, I think. This too shall pass.
