'Raw' Comedians Prevail Over Naked Men

The comics who performed in the  at The Canyon Club on Thursday night faced several tough issues.

For starters, they were playing in the back room of , a nice venue, certainly, but one that attracts a markedly different crowd from all the LA venues that they’re used to. But, far worse than that, on this particular night, the main room of The Canyon Club happened to be hosting a burlesque dance show entitled “The Men of Hollywood.”

The pounding music (not to mention drunken hooting and hollering) that bled in from the other room was distracting to say the least, both for the comics and the audience. Stand up comedy has long been considered one of the most challenging entertainment fields; the last thing these people need is to be competing head-to-head with naked men.

Still, the varied group of comedians managed to overcome these hurdles and deliver a mostly fun and engaging show for the (admittedly, rather long) running time.

The strongest set of the night came early on, courtesy of Jen Murphy. Ms. Murphy did something that can be suicide for more unskilled comics: she established herself as low-status. The reason so many comics are loud and abrasive with their audience is because that’s the easiest, most direct way of exerting control over a very frightening situation.

In lesser hands, the character type that Murphy adopted – awkward, shy, unsure of herself – would instantly surrender all power to the crowd. But Murphy’s writing was so funny, and her performance so precise, that my initial worries instantly vanished. By the end of her set, she had the crowd laughing out loud at the slightest facial tic or hand gesture. 

Also excellent were Jackie Monahan, who somehow came across as charming and sweet while delivering some very vulgar material, and Chris Dunham. Mr. Dunham looks a whole lot like Daniel Tosh, and there are some stylistic similarities as well, though Dunham has a harder edge to his delivery. It took the crowd a little while to warm up to his dry, sardonic style, but once they did, he scored some of the biggest laughs of the night.

Unfortunately, some of the other comics had a hard time adjusting their particular personalities to the room. I’m sure there are plenty of small, hip stages in the city that would have loved Sarah King’s strange, imagistic rendering of her relationship with her father. But in this case, it led to one long, uncomfortable silence after another.

The same goes for Tammy Jo Dearen, whose harsh, aggressive style seemed to swallow the audience whole. For every member of the audience that was guffawing at Ms. Dearen's forceful set, there was someone else glancing nervously at the floor.

Headliner Christina Pazskitsky had 30 minutes on stage, and she made fairly good use of her time. The best parts of her set were the times when she dug in pretty close to the bone, revealing intimate and often discomfiting details about her everyday life.

At one point, after discussing the state of her physique after the holidays, she lifted up her shirt and barred her stomach for all; it was a genuinely shocking moment, so off-base from what we've all come to expect from a female performer, and all the gasps very quickly morphed into waves of laughter.

In general, Pazskitsky's 30 minutes felt a bit free-form and rambly, something more suited to an open mic night than the top position on a comedy bill. She had lots of great material in her set, no question, but it sometimes took her awhile to get to it.

Rounding out the night was host Sam Comroe, who has teretts syndrome; I say this, not because it was particularily distracting during his delivery, but because it constituted the vast majority of his material. This is a common problem: rarely does a disability actually impair a comic’s performance, but, far too often, comics will use their disability as the sole source of their comedy.

Still, Comroe was pretty funny and genuinely likeable, which is what you need in a good host. The other male comic of the night was Marco Assante, who was very funny, and had a masculine, New York energy that was a nice contrast with most of the other performers of the night. 

Oh, and that "Men of Hollywood" show that seemed so exciting when it was just the pumping music and our fevered imaginations? When Ms. Pazsitsky's set ended and we were permitted to walk into the next room, it looked surprisingly tame, and, yes, pretty boring. All things considered, that unassuming back room was actually the place to be.

The "Comedy in the Raw 2011 Tour" is produced by Alexe Liss.