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Second City’s ‘Too Busy to Hate…’ is non-stop laughs
THEATER REVIEW. "The Second City: Too Busy to Hate...Too Hard to Commute." Grade: B+ Through Oct. 26. Alliance Theatre's Hertz Stage, Woodruff Arts Center, 1280 Peachtree St. N.E., Midtown. 404-733-5000, alliance.org. Bottom Line: A laugh-out-loud tour of the town.
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
A couple of tourists from Chicago are gliding into Atlanta on the freeway. The skyline beckons. It will be an adventure. “Man, even driving in Atlanta is a breeze,” says the husband to the wife.
Boy are they in for a surprise.
Thus begins “The Second City: Too Busy to Hate… Too Hard to Commute.” Created by Chicago’s famed Second City comedy troupe at the invitation of the Alliance Theatre, the show arrived Wednesday night like some zany spaghetti junction revue of song, dance, sketch comedy and improv. Designed and performed with loopy abandon, purposefully engineered to mock the city’s politics, prejudices, flaws, foibles, icons and institutions, the show leaves skidmarks on everything from our hoopskirt past to our hip-hop present.
Atlanta may be forever stuck in traffic and running on empty, but director Matt Hovde has assembled a cast of nimble, free-form driver-performers who are game to burn a high-octane blend of social satire and piston-popping physical comedy.
No one is safe in this second torching of Atlanta.
Mayor Shirley Franklin gets serenaded by a suave R&B crooner (Ric Walker), who is smitten with her “platinum blonde” hairdo and her signature “big-ass flower.” Southern belle Charlotte (Robyn Norris) pens letters to her soldier-beau Jonathan (Tim Stoltenberg) during a skit in which the audience supplies lines — and the quick-witted improv artists throw them back with dazzling speed. A Waffle House owner (Michael Lehrer) seeking the U.S. presidency says that “running out of country ham after a Ludacris” concert qualifies him to deal with any natural disaster that might come his way. And in one of the funniest segments, a jive-talking brother (Anthony Irons) tries to hawk an energy drink that’s administered through the eyes. Ouch.
This being a product of Chicago, you can only imagine Barack Obama comes up quite a bit. (The Obama joke is like the time Toni Morrison said Bill Clinton was the first African-American president — only it’s magnified to the nth power.) So if you are expecting John McCain to get equal time, you may be disappointed.
While a good measure of the schtick is new, some of it is based on classics of The Second City repertoire. (The writing is credited to the cast of The Second City, with additional material by Ed Furman and TJ Shanoff.) Given the improvisational nature of the game, the show will look a little different each night, like a comic chameleon, and new lines are introduced to play off the news of the day. (On Wednesday night, for example, the opening sequence made reference to the city’s gas shortage.)
Naturally, some of the gimmicks fall flat — such as the riff on the “Piedmont Private Club,” the polar bear business and some rambling reference to Georgia Bulldogs (I think). Sometimes, the performers are at the mercy of the crowd, so don’t sit down front if you are brain-dead or dumb-stuck. (Kudos by the way to Amy Roeder for not letting her turn as the twangy waitress from Carl, Ga., go completely off course due to the lethargy of audience members.)
Part of the thrill of the ride is the totally random nature of its twist and turns. Anything can happen at a Second City show, and usually does. This company of actors is particularly strong at split-second invention and minor miracles of timing. Though the piece hasn’t quite figured out how it should end, you’ll be so busy laughing that it will be too hard to care.
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