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TORONTO - As any Leafs fan can tell you, a change in team direction can be a painful experience.
Happily for Second City’s latest mainstage production, Second City For Mayor, prodigal director Melody Johnson didn’t ship anybody to Anaheim. This despite the underperformance of the last outing, the overwritten Show Us Your Tweets.
Inheriting a cast predominantly hired for its writing skills (Kris Siddiqi is the one new trouper), Johnson has allowed the troupe to play to its strength in Second City For Mayor. This, while keeping the actors in motion and wrapping them in cool stagery. (I particularly liked the dance-silhouette segues that replaced the cliched stage “blackouts” — a retro-cool affectation, like something from the opening credits of a Rat Pack movie.)
The result on opening night Tuesday was some of the sharpest-written, socially resonant and mordantly funny sketches that the Second City stage has seen in years.
Beyond the milieu, Second City For Mayor may simply be a case of a cast getting comfortable enough to take risks. Even when the odd sketch wasn’t executed well — such as the verbose first act “Cyclist’s Funeral” bit — it showed a willingness to “go there.” The sketch, in which a bike activist, a car defender and a TTC employee all have their say about the deceased, might have been “too soon” in the wake of the Michael Bryant case. But when the TTC employee (Dale Boyer) gets up and says, “I’m leaving and I don’t know when I’m coming back,” and gets one of the loudest laughs of the night, it says something for topicality.
Other sketches verged on sublime social satire. A take-off on a World Vision style adopt-a-child PSAs had a host (Rob Baker) with an African child — “a child soldier at 4, a child general at 5!” — trying in vain to solicit donations alongside another charity shill (Adam Cawley), raising money with an adorable dog (Boyer), spoke volumes about valuing animals over people. (Human pitch: “For a dollar a day — the price of a Coffee Time coffee” vs. Animal pitch: “For $7 a day, the price of a Starbucks venti chai latte!”)
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Baker was great in the ultimate spoof of the current vogue in populist politics, playing a politician who brags, “I’m just like you! I know jacksh-- about politics!” and trolls the audience for opinions, vehemently agreeing with everyone.
That sketch was one of two improv-based bits that worked well — chops not especially in evidence before. Janisse’s shining moment was a song called It Could Be Worse, with suggestion-based verses about the lives of workers in various countries and times. (You try coming up with a rhyme scheme for “ancient Belgium.”)
Another solid sketch had Cawley and Boyer as parents who discover their sullen daughter (Caitlin Howden) has been “sexting” her boyfriend, and then realize how lame that is compared to the real sex and vices they enjoyed when they were young. What starts as a lecture turns into taunts. “Why don’t you text your Sims boyfriend and go snort some virtual cocaine?” dad sneers.
The most powerful sketch, however, was one that showed this troupe isn’t afraid of silences. In it, Janisse plays the immigrant manager of a Mmmuffins franchise, whose customer turns out to be the CIA operative (Baker) who’d spent years torturing him at Guantanamo Bay. Some dark “torture humour” elicited the occasional nervous chuckle. But, believe it or not, the penultimate punch line broke the tension with the loudest laughter of the night. It was a bravura piece of relevant sketch comedy.