  SCTV's John Candy, Catherine O' Hara, Andrea Martin and Eugene Levy, in a 1983 photo. (QMI Agency files)
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CHICAGO — Sometimes, when you see where they came from, you see why they are where they are today.
Case in point, best friends Stephen Colbert and Steve Carell, working together at Saturday night’s marathon Second City 50th Anniversary alumni gala here.
It was four hours of sketches from the ’60s to the ’00s, performed by the likes of Fred Willard, Robert Klein, Joe Flaherty, Jeff Garlin, Dan Castellaneta (yes, Homer Simpson) Harold Ramis, David Steinberg, Tim Meadows, Rachel Dratch, Betty Thomas, Shelley Berman and kids from the current Chicago cast.
But a bit from ’94, taken from an audience improv suggestion of “Maya Angelou goes home,” provided easily the most sublime moment of surreality. Back then, Colbert and Carell took that near impossible improv assignment for two white guys and turned it into a veritable Twilight Zone episode in which Colbert takes his best friend “Steve” to his home town, where he inexplicably is addressed lovingly by the townsfolk as “Shirley Wentworth.”
“Oh I forgot to tell you,” Colbert tells Carell. “When I’m home, I’m an old Black woman.”
Apparently, whatever voodoo is at work is contageous, as the people who meet “Steve” begin referring to him as “Sarah.”
The crux of the piece comes when “Shirley Wentworth” meets her old flame (David Razowsky), from the forbidden interracial romance that sent her running off to a life as a white guy in a suit. When they share a tender kiss, it’s audience pandemonium.
Not every bit went as far into the ozone (nor does improv always pay off, as a set with Betty Thomas proved), but it was interesting to compare how styles of sketch comedy have changed. Some were more sentimental than laugh-riots. And the older the sketch, the longer they seemed to take to tell (a testiment, perhaps, to today’s shorter attention spans).
You could also see some interesting comedy throughlines. A 1971 sketch about the funeral of a guy who died suffocating with a gallon can of Van Camp’s baked beans over his head (with Joe Flaherty as a mourner who couldn’t stop laughing, and Jim Belushi as the angry son staring daggers at him), seemed like the germ of the classic Chuckles The Clown funeral episode of The Mary Tyler Moore Show, which came a few years later.
Speaking of throughlines, Belushi got to do a pretty spot-on sketch about a father-and-son drinking session with his real-life son Robert.
And the best-surviving comedy was David Steinberg’s sarcastic stories of Solomon and Moses, the bit which reputedly got the Smothers Brothers cancelled in the ’60s.
And not lost in the Chicago-love was our own Toronto troupe. Naomi Sniekus, Jim Annan and Leslie Seiler got to reprise a bit from ’06 about a mom masquerading as her son on MSN. And Melody Johnson and Jack Mosshammer reprised a very smart and funny ’90s sketch, The Glass Mamet, in which two actors who’ve only ever performed in The Glass Menagerie have to drop F-bombs in Glengarry Glen Ross for the first time in their lives.
More proof that comedy has 1,000 faces.
MY KIND OF TOWN — MELONVILLE IS: Meanwhile, people were still buzzing about Friday night’s hugely successful reunion of SCTV (basically including everybody but Rick Moranis — who has dropped out of the business — and John Candy, who was certainly there in spirit).
Highlight of the night was a very special episode of the Sammy Maudlin show, in which Sammy (Flaherty) briefly memorialized the late William B (John Candy), and introduced his new sidekick (and tax accountant) Moe Green (Ramis). The “episode” featured Jackie Rogers Jr. (Martin Short) and Andrea Martin performing the “forbidden dance” that got Jackie kicked off Dancing With The Stars, and a cheesy duet of Canadian hits with Bobby Bittman (Eugene Levy) and Lola Heatherton (Catherine O’Hara) — including Sunglasses At Night, Sometimes When We Touch, You Oughta Know and If You Could Read My Mind.
People always say “you had to be there.” But this time we mean it — there are no plans at this time to televise the one-off event.
jim.slotek@sunmedia.ca
