KU KLUX KLAMBAKE
For some years now Second City’s time-tested formulas for homogenized, pasteurized, utterly inoffensive satirical revues have been the very model of theater that’s outlived its era. True, the shows still pack ’em in on weekends and sell out weeks in advance. They’re not bad, but they’re a far cry from the intelligent, articulate shows of even 12 years ago. Meanwhile, Cardiff Giant and Metraform have been using improv games to create funny and original theater that would never in a million years be confused with a Second City revue.
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Second City Northwest’s last show, Welcome to the Barn Raising, was surprisingly original and funny. It managed both to avoid the number-one killer of Second City shows–sketches reminiscent of earlier, better-done Second City bits–and to forge an original, contemporary comic style. This style at once acknowledges the debt to Second City’s 32-year history while mocking–sometimes gently, sometimes not so gently–its traditions. It was best exemplified by Jackie Hoffman’s reflexive intro: she explained how to put together a musical introduction while behind her the rest of the cast performed one.
Of course, Ku Klux Klambake would never be confused with an Annoyance Theatre show. For one thing, it scrupulously follows Second City’s time-honored short-sketch format–and some of the show’s longer scenes are played with such commitment and attention to character development that they could easily have been twice as long. For another, Ku Klux Klambake follows Second City’s tradition of giving women the smaller roles. This cast includes two talented women, Hoffman and Nia Vardalos, both of whom had more to do in Welcome to the Barn Raising, despite–or maybe because of–the fact that Amy Sedaris (who is sorely missed) was also in the company. It’s hard not to wonder whether the loss of musical director Faith Soloway, currently in New York with her brainchild The Real Live Brady Bunch, doesn’t also have something to do with Hoffman and Vardalos’s diminished roles.
Part of the problem is two very long but not very humorous sketches, one about a woman introducing her normal, well-mannered boyfriend to her gauche lower-middle-class Italian family, the other about an incredibly annoying quartet of kvetchers. An even greater problem is that, with the exception of Ron West, the show’s unacknowledged star, no one in the cast seems capable of creating an original, memorable comic character. Everyone seems content to perform the first stereotype that comes into his or her head. Jill Talley’s cheerleader never departs from the thousands of cheerleader imitations that have been performed before. It’s as if the cast have forgotten what the world looks like outside of Piper’s Alley, and can only lift characters from other comedy sketches.
