Review: Assscat and Greatest Concert Ever

New York’s Upright Citizens Brigade has a formidable reputation as a nursery for new comedy talent – so it comes as a huge disappointment just what a mess their two Just For Laughs shows are.

First up, Assscat, an improv show where a guest star shares a couple of favourite anecdotes, before the cast make up scenes inspired from it.

The guest tonight was Nick Kroll, star of the ill-fated sitcom Cavemen, based on characters from a series of commercials. How could that show possibly have failed?

He told us of the night he met Alex Baldwin and of the time he worked in a restaurant where Harrison Ford was a regular and a man claiming to be from the Lamborghini family once scammed a free meal.

These tales themselves were long-winded and hesitant, not well-honed yarns you might find in a storytelling night, which immediately stamped a feeling of struggling amateurism on the night – which the improvisers only enhanced.

In their very first sketch, for example, they tried to come up with film and movie spin-offs for other advertising mascots – a fairly open idea of the sort you might find in any panel game – yet they flailed around came up with next to zip.

A couple of subsequent ideas temporarily ground to silence as no one could think what to do next. In most cases, the achievement was in bringing each scene to something resembling a natural end, rather than generating great laughs. The only exception, really, was the idea of a bear working in an office, which threw up a slew of good gags and demonstrated a surreal wit redolent of Gary Larson’s Far Side cartoons.

Outside of this, there were maybe two or three moments when a line of genuine comic inspiration struck; for the rest of the hour this seemed like actors going through an exercise more than a glimpse into the future of comedy.

However, this was a work of genius compared to the self-indulgent twaddle that was the Greatest Concert Ever, the subsequent show in which members of the troupe dressed up as musical heroes such as Neil Young, Jim Morrison, and Al Green.

It was little more than bad karaoke as they mugged their way through their idols’ hits to a CD – the advertised ‘live backing band’ being nothing more than the acoustic guitar ‘Neil Young’ brought along.

Some improvised Q&A with the audience was attempted, but the questions dried up as soon as it became apparent the answers were going nowhere. Attempts at humour included the Jim Morrison character donning a black dildo (who needs a reason?) and Morrissey being a bit miserable (older readers may remember such jokes were popular in the early Nineties).

The only highlight was when they actually bothered to write something: a silly sketch in which a David Bowie fan got to accompany his hero by providing the countdown on Space Oddity, only to screw it up repeatedly.

But otherwise this was $15 to witness comedians attempt to live out their bedroom rock and roll fantasies. As Garfunkel & Oates came on as Salt-N-Pepa, the only sensible reaction is Push It? You can shove it, mate.

Reviewed by:Steve Bennett
Montreal, July 2009

Published: 27 Jul 2009