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TORONTO - The Alberta tar sands, a flying casket, marijuana in space and Donkey Kong.
No, it's not the alternate ending of the Lost finale, but some of the more amusing highlights of the new Second City offering Something Wicked Awesome This Way Comes which opened Tuesday evening in Toronto.
The six-member ensemble -- under the direction of Chris Earle -- does a very good job of mixing current events with some rather bizarre premises over roughly 90 minutes.
Beginning and ending with some pokes at the recent G20 and police handling (including using the "kettle" tactic and surrounding parts of the audience), the show is quite consistent in terms of performances, with perhaps Adam Cawley and Inessa Frantowski getting some of the bigger laughs.
Early on, Cawley and Caitlin Howden portrayed two "friends" who tried to avoid each other yet insisted putting on a friendly facade, resulting in slow motion asides that most related to. But Cawley was at his best as the fast-talking, anal-retentive, tech-geek backseat driver with Frantowski and Kris Siddiqi in front, showing his iPhone application with the sound of Tic Tacs being dispensed.
Meanwhile Frantowski has more of the sexy, sassy roles opposite Rob Baker with the chemistry definitely apparent. Although the duo doesn't do much as godparents in one scene opposite, a coffee shop setting where exes meet shows the synergy. The exes discuss their lives before ending up doing "airport security pat-downs" on each other.
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Some of the biggest laughs were also for some of the wittier material, including a song about words. Here Howden began singing "Words and words" repeatedly adding lyrics about the vocal range and register needed to create a radio-friendly pop song, complete with Siddiqi and Dale Boyer as the backing vocalist and "urban" guest singer, respectively.
As for her time in the spotlight, Boyer seemed to shine in one sketch where she represented the government during a press conference on oil spills and the Alberta tar sands. Putting the positive spin on basically every answer and answering questions with more questions, Boyer worked her way deftly through the piece which seemed to go a tad longer than needed.
The biggest highlight had to be a skit featuring Siddiqi as a grieving son whose father died with Baker and Cawley as supportive friends. Embarrassed at how he let his father literally slip through his hands on the church steps, he's later comforted in the fact a video was taken of the tumbling casket and posted on YouTube. The bit is revisited later on with the ensemble acting out the video and the remix version.
A close second was Frantowski, Howden and Siddiqi as Russian, American and Canadian astronauts aboard the International Space Station with one of them having smuggled marijuana on board. The physical "spaced out" antics worked well with the smart one-liners.
Despite the fact some parts felt a bit forced and the odd skit just fell flat, overall Something Wicked Awesome This Way Comes worked. And when you can work a scene from the classic arcade game Donkey Kong seamlessly into a dancehall setting, you know you're on to something.