Years ago, one of my closest friends introduced me to BriTANick’s videos. I was instantly hooked. I’ve always loved sketch comedy, but BriTANick was the first sketch comedy group of my generation that seems to truly understand and master absurdity in their work. So when I learned that Brian McElhaney and Nick Kocher were bringing BriTANick back to SF Sketchfest, I lost my goddamn mind—I had to go to this show. I wasn’t in town during their previous Sketchfest appearances and was over the moon to finally see them performing live.
The comedic geniuses behind “Eagles Are Turning People Into Horses” kicked off their show with a wacky ghost sketch. The crowd was instantly in stitches, and as Kocher and McElhaney wrapped up, they reveled in their warm welcome back to San Francisco as they quickly introduced themselves. Next up was stand-up comedian Alex Edelman, who completely threw everyone off by entering through a trapdoor toward the front of the stage. (I sat in the second row, so I jumped straight up before dissolving into hysterical laughter, much like everyone else seated nearby.) Edelman’s set was seamless, gliding from joke to joke with perfect ease. All of his stories were hysterical, but his retelling of his Jewish family celebrating Christmas in his childhood brought the house down.
The show continued with another perfectly executed sketch involving pickles and revenge and well-placed zany music that has me cackling even as I’m typing this. Most great comedy stems from the communication and ever changing relationships between characters, but it takes skill and precision to marry that with zany concepts outside the realm of traditional storytelling and jokes. (It also didn’t hurt that pickles and revenge and well-placed zany music are all listed as interests on my online dating profiles.)
Kocher joined the stage next, telling humorous stories about his family and his childhood. He taught us about the evolution of his last name’s pronunciation, and shared a story about his chaotically messy but funny uncle had the audience in stitches. But Kocher took the cake with an embarrassing and heartwarming story about using magic as a child to try and make bullies nicer—and trying to make his middle school girlfriend break up with him. His entire set was golden, not a detail or joke out of place, but Kocher’s witchcraft tricks made me laugh until I cried so much that my mascara ran down my cheeks.
A true legend came to life that night in San Francisco with an act from Clam Shelly, played by Natalie Palamides. In a flirty, hilarious burlesque act gone wrong in all the right ways, Shelly finally provided the gritty and hysterical reality that The Little Mermaid left out. I don’t know where Palamides has been all my life, but after seeing her avant-garde mermaid performance, I can’t imagine not following her work now.
Keeping up the momentum, Kocher and McElhaney returned to the stage with another sketch that hit close to my romcom-loving heart, spoofing on the heartfelt “leave your boyfriend” and morphing it into a darkly layered story about death, funerals, and The Ring. The perfectly timed escalation of emotion and nonsense balanced with logic was made all the more entertaining with another brilliant appearance by Palamides at the end.
I was pleasantly surprised to see McElhaney join the stage with a keyboard next. I’ve seen him advertising his one-man show in Los Angeles and knew that it featured musical acts, but was unable to catch any of his shows before the first run ended. (He’ll be performing again in both Los Angeles and New York later this year.) McElhaney glowed as he played the keyboard, belting out original songs about Los Angeles and wealth before moving onto a riveting act he described as a movement piece. His extended exploration of a lip sync lesson was captivating, fascinating, incredibly intense, perfect. He is clearly at home onstage, a master of showmanship.
As teased in the show description, BriTANick previewed a new video toward the end. While they’re not fully ready to share it with the world online, the audience ate it up. They closed out the show with one more classic sketch where they read each other’s minds and started speaking simultaneously; a simple concept, sure, but nonetheless silly and fast and joyful, and showing a massive amount of skill and trust between Kocher and McElhaney.
One review of their work and their show can’t fully capture the joy that everyone experienced that night in the theater. I don’t know that I saw a single person walking out without a giant smile and a twinkle in their eye. With so many predictable jokes and shows and characters and tropes, BriTANick is the zany, out there, mind-bending breath of fresh air we need in comedy right now.
