The Chicago Blog

If the lines into the Stage 773 theatre were any measure of the show about to begin, the 10th Annual Chicago Comedy Festival would be worth the wait. And it was.

The festival opened Thursday, Jan. 6 and ran through Sunday, and will continue on the next weekend as well. The shows I attended were on Saturday evening, Space Chocolate at 6 p.m. and The Cool Table at 7 p.m. These were just two of the 18 shows playing that evening. Each night there are multiple shows going on at once as Stage 773 houses three diffrent stages. There are different starting times every evening, i.e. 8p.m. Thursday, 7p.m. Friday, but each show runs one hour and starts on the hour. It continues this way until the last show gets out at midnight. The three stages inside Stage 773 allow shows to go on simultaneously, allowing patrons to view all the acts without ever leaving the building.

I arrived a few minutes before the first show to make sure I got a good seat. As I entered the venue, I was pleasently surprised. The box office was located in to the right of the entrance, far enough away to allow the lines to get long without blocking the doors. The lobby was spacious, large enough to leave room for a full service bar. It did get crowded as the evening went on, but those running the show clearly had anticipated large crowds and directred traffic well.

Stage 773 was also incredibly easy to get to. Whether one is traveling by train, bus, car or walking, it was easy to locate and get into. It was just a few blocks down Belmont also allowing for a wide selection of restaurants and bars for those looking to make it a full evening. There is even a 4 a.m. bar, Big City Tap, close by for those who stay for all the shows. Stage 773 is also right down the street from the Bailiwick Theatre, which was redone over the last year.

Before going in to watch Space Chocolate perform, I go to see Chicago Sketch Comedy Festival management team at work. As it got crowded they did a great job of keeping lines moving and getting people in and out of the theatres quickly. For new comers things were clearly marked like where to go if one was paying for cash and how to obtain a wrist band for the bar. I especially enjoyed the Master of Ceremonies, as I liked to call him. In the left hand corner of the lobby there was a deck built and a man sat in this balcony before each show. Once the shows began he blew his horn and announced the theatre’s opening. It built excitement as everyone scurried to get a seat.

Space Chocolate performed in the North theatre at 6p.m. The group was made up of two men and featured another troupe, Man On the Ledge. Space Chocolate started out with a sketch about a woman getting stood up at a Swedish restaurant. The waiter had a Swedish accent and all the food had “funny” Swedish names. At the end of the sketch when the woman asked the waiter to join him, he turns out to be American. The sketches continued to be of this sort of caliber. The humor was predictable and stale. Often they went for the cheap laugh by making racial jokes or using physical comedy. Both men had stage presence and had clearly performed before, but they lacked comedic timing. Also they didn’t work well as a team. One man clearly was a stage hog, something I find to be extremely annoying. Man On A Ledge, however, brightened up the show a bit. While they weren’t leaving me in tears, they did have good comedic timing. They worked well together as a group and seemed to know each group members strengths well. Their sketches also had a bit more creativity and they used more socially relevant material. I especially enjoyed one in which the two girls in the group of six were radio DJ’s at a jazz station. All in all the performance left me a little weary about the rest of the evening.

Then The Cool Table happened.

The Cool Table began at 7p.m. in the west theatre. Within the first minute I was crying from laughter. Sketch after sketch they never fell flat. Their vocal inflections, comedic timing and physicality were flawless, creating a show where only mere seconds went by before the crowd was laughing again. Their humor was a nice mix of silly and adult. They incorporated buzzworthy medium, like Glee, into their writing, but also used classic topics, like cross-dressing, with new twists. For example, their performance included a the classic break up sketch, where the break up-er says “It’s not you, it’s everything about you.”, only this time the break up happened between male friends. Just one example of how they used the buzzworthy “bromance” in conjunction with the classic break up theme. The shining star of the evening, however, were the two ladies. They were the voice over to a mediation tape in which they took the audience on a journey throughout the body as nomads, rapped about lady parts and cereal and one stole the show when she sang about her cross-dressing. I laughed so hard, I cried.

The festival was clearly a hit, not just based on my opinion but based on the sheer number of people that came out to see the show. Brian Posen, the creator of the festival, has done a great job organizing the event, expanding the number of groups and gaining community support. It shows in the number of returning guests and through the performers, as both groups gave a shot out to him at the end of their shows. I urge everyone and anyone who has a couple extra bucks and enjoys shows like It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia or SNL then the Chicago Sketch Comedy Festival will deliver. I know I will be going back.