Photos by Jakub Mosur
I’m not sure what the “unplugged” in Kids In The Hall Unplugged is referring to. Non-electric comedians? Acoustic comedians? The first thing that happened was a sound issue with one of the mics running foul and each member of the cast hopping up and down and tapping and teasing each other to figure out whose it was. They were wireless mics, so there’s that. As will likely become apparent, I am not a comedy reviewer. I’m not even much of a live comedy consumer. Perhaps “unplugged” is vernacularly smuggled in from live music that has assumed its own valence. At any rate, the mic problem, rather than hindering the performance, seemed to loosen everybody up and give them a chance to stretch their ad-lib muscles in these predefined but still vigorous skits.
It hardly needs to be stated these are no longer kids pitching jokes in these halls. Though not exactly wizened, four of the five are white hairs, most of the sketches are on the far side of their fourth decade, and, as Sketchfest founder Janet Varney, who loosely MC’d the evening, observed, KITH has if not performed, have at least sent ambassadors to every one of Sketchfest’s 21 years. None of this is to suggest that the act is long in the tooth. If anything, the evening’s casual ‘unplugged’ nature showcased how well-seasoned it is.
The stage is bare except for guitarist Allyson Baker off to the side (also not unplugged) playing the familiar surf-rock intro and various interludes, six stackable banquet room style chairs, and a rolling rack of costuming that was to remain largely untouched. Varney saddled up to the boys, panel style, for an introduction, light banter, and an ill-advised bid for questions from the almost entirely gen-x crowd that went nowhere.
The chairs were first brought to the front of the stage for a pantomimed poker game for the sketch “Women,” wherein each butch male character, in turn, expressed a desire to experience, in some way, a womanly trait. Almost a prescient comment on the broader cultural bucking against static gender enforcement. With skits like this and “Dave’s Menstruation,” performed later, as well as the kid’s propensity for cross-dressing, it is remarkable that this 4/5 straight all-white cis male gang of Canadians has not run afoul of progress and aged like sour milk. It is observed that, somehow, the crew has avoided trading in toxic masculinity (good to know it can be done: take note, Male comedians). Dave jibes that they had done so by generally avoiding masculinity all together.
The Kids moved through over a dozen skits through the evening, coming to the front of the stage and receding to the panel as required. Mark, whose mic had been the culprit, regained the stage and quite impressively tied a full Windsor knot with no mirror while being teased and returning fire. The next sketch, “Fat Americans,” insulting the audience with Bruce, required a certain professionalism.
This was followed by Mark and Scott’s reversing type in the gaybaiting Dracula. Allyson Boyer smuggled in a little “Bella Lugosi’s Dead” from the “Red Room Orchestra Performs the Music of The Lost Boys” from earlier in the week. She would slyly interject little queues throughout the night.
The kids traded the stage throughout the night, sharing space and time evenly. Still boyish, Bruce did the first monologue of the night with his ersatz rebel, “Bank People.” Dave and Kevin moved up for “Sarcastic Guy.” Dave’s over-the-top sarcasm performed much more deftly than the original. Bruce and Scott did “Salty Ham,” the first and only cross-dressing of the evening. Mark cast a brief “Lopez” into the audience, and Kevin joined him for an extended version of “Bigot” in a pantomimed taxicab.
The banter and ribbing between sits revealed the natural pairings that are always the case with ensembles and sometimes seemed acidic, betraying the personal and historical. But no sting seemed to last, and I believe we were witness to an expression inherent to comedy, even Canadian, that we unfunny folk would find hurtful but is really a respectful act of craft.
Bruce backed Kevin for “Bass Player,” my least favorite sketch of the evening. But then, I am not a bass player. The player is really a Kevin monologue, and in that case, all five Kids got one.
One of the high points was Scott’s Buddy Cole, the only new material presented, where Buddy basically prayed out loud to our imminent alien overlords, pleading on behalf of humans at large but hedging for himself just in case.
The night was bookended by another full-cast skit, “Reg,” which was also one of the best-played and funniest bits. In “Reg,” the Kids are memorializing a fallen friend whom it turns out they had just violently murdered. It is a perfect closer and, in a way, creates an avatar for their internecine resentments, a macabre metaphor for the act of making comedy in the long term as a group. And successfully so. I was laughing and guffawing throughout the night. There was no lag; each comedian brought their A-game and expressed their strengths. Having returned to the original skits on YouTube for this article, the matured versions were generally better.
