By Second City. At: Second City Mainstage Theater, 1616 N. Wells St.. Tickets: 312-337-3992; $23-29 . Runs through: April 2 ( Tues-Sun ), with some additional performances after April 2
"Do you ever have deja vu?" Andie MacDowell's Rita asks Phil Connors, played by Bill Murray, in the classic '90s comedy Groundhog Day.
"Didn't you just ask me that?" Phil responds, playfully, though he's been seducing her for "days," carefully trying to get his moves right with each recurring day.
The truth is you haven't seen a Second City show like Fool Me Twice, Deja Vu, the company's 104th revue, which opened on its mainstage earlier this month. The phenomenon of having experienced a certain situation before proved comedy gold for Groundhog Day and it clearly has its benefits in the world of sketch comedy, putting a framework around Second City's often sharp and topical humor.
In a time when we constantly find ourselves asking, "Isn't this 2015? How is ___ still a problem?", Fool Me Twice provides a comical outlook on present times through an ever-changing lens. The show shifts regularly from insightful to challenging the audience to, of course, making fun of the audience. No one is safe, not even millennials.
How the cast of six ( Second City veterans Chelsea Devantez, Paul Jurewicz and Daniel Strauss, with new cast members Sarah Shook, Rashawn Nadine Scott and Jamison Webb ) have crafted the show around the theme is unclear until the second act, when the first-act jokes resurface in surprising ways. Fortunately, the individual sketches are funny enough, deja vu or no.
Hollywood whitewashing, superhuman expectations for young mothers and, of course, the current slate of presidential candidates are among the many topics that speak to the climate of 2015 and serve as a hilarious year in review. A couple sketches imagine this year as if it were the past and the future, reminding us how improved but still flawed society has become.
But the show's real genius are the tie-ins in the second act, which see all the first-act sketches flipped and mixed up in inventive and surprising ways that catch the audience off-guard and test our memory of the first half of the show. It evokes the effectiveness of a standup comedian successfully calling back to an earlier joke when the audience didn't see it coming.
The artistic point of this exercise isn't entirely clear in spite of the show's wrap-up musical finale, but there's something meaningful to latch on to regardless, it's just a little more subjective to each audience member in terms of what will provoke thought or laughter or how the "daja vu" tactic will resonate.
Relevant, fresh and clever, this revue might fool you into thinking twice about some timely issues or even your own shtickand maybe you'll be tricked into seeing it again.