It Takes a Village, People!
Playwrights: The ensemble. At: Salsation Theatre Company at Gorilla Tango Theatre, 1919 N. Milwaukee. Phone: 773-598-4549; $12. Runs through: Nov. 6
Big Gay Pudding
Playwrights: The ensemble. At: White Rainbows at The Call, 1547 W. Bryn Mawr. Phone: 800-838-3006; $10. Runs through: Oct. 23
It used to be that GayCo was the only game in town when it came to Chicago LGBT sketch comedy. But now, there are three other gay-leaning sketch comedy troupes performing around Chicago.
Unfortunately my busy schedule didn't permit me to catch Quixotic's Apocalypse: Now in 3-D at the bar Hydrate ( now playing through Oct. 23 ) . But I was able to fit in two other sketch shows on one Saturday: Salsation Theatre Company's It Takes a Village, People! at the Gorilla Tango Theatre and White Rainbows' Big Gay Pudding at The Call. While both shows were rough around the edges, one ensemble's writing and overall performance style was streets ahead of the other.
First the good news: Salsation's It Takes a Village, People! delivers plenty of laughs in its all too short 60-minute run time. The company is largely made up of Latino actors and writers, but the humor is targeted all the way at gay men.
Aaron Page starts things off right in a hilarious bit as a feather-boa wielding and singing "Out-o-Gram," making a very public outing of Hugo Rosado's unsuspecting coffee shop denizen quite the side-splitter. Another strong performer is Patrick Garone, who is very funny in butch drag as Mary Cheney ( the former Vice President's lesbian daughter ) selling militaristic Halliburton "shock and awe"-style outings.
Other broached topics include sex-obsessed online dating, super-sanitary obsessive compulsiveness and ageism in Chicago's shifting gay-bar scene. While director Charles Hall should have pushed some of his performers to put much more oomph into their many comic characterizations, It Takes a Village… proves its humor chops with plenty of bite and sweetness.
Now the bad news: White Rainbows' Big Gay Pudding was upstaged by its opening act guest troupe, Rabbit Rabbit Sketch Comedy. These three guys of Rabbit Rabbit had a better grip at setting up a sketch and providing a great zinger without plodding along without a firm direction like so many of White Rainbows' sketches.
That's not to say all is bad in Big Gay Pudding. Michael Barin and Stanley A. Chong were hilarious in a portable-media marriage proposal sketch, while Matt Utter's self-centered delivery of his lines often proves funnier than the concluding comic button that evades so many of the sketches in Big Gay Pudding.
Director Cassie Soliday really should have reined in the meandering pacing and bizarre sketch topics ( for example, I have no idea what the whole point was about the Winnie the Pooh plushy costume, nor the sketches about a Blacksploitation-style magician or an exotic pudding party ) .
Now you won't find comic perfection with these two troupes. But if you're looking for great gay comedy, one show clearly outshines the other.