Second to None

Oh, the Places You’ll Glow! 

Is there anything more delightful to do in Chicago as the days turn dark and dreary then to experience the world-class sketch comedy of Second City e.t.c.’s new show, Oh, the Places You’ll Glow?  Disregard the dopey title (the show features glow sticks and brilliantly colored fiber optics, but a hundred other titles would’ve sounded more appealing and less juvenile) and focus instead on a troupe of comic performers and writers at the pinnacle of heart and hilarity.  

The “heart” part is really the key.  What makes Oh, the Places You’ll Glow so memorable is that the sketches, whether of the realistic, slice-of-life variety or the surreal and absurdist type, glow with humanity.  The humor is always organic and character-based, growing, albeit in some very wild directions, out of the way real people think and act in the real world.  A particular highlight for me was a scene in a T.J. Maxx dressing room, featuring a mother and daughter (Meghan Babbe and Leila Gorstein respectively) sparring over the daughter’s choice of a too-tight pair of pants, exchanging their fears and insecurities over weight and body image, and discussing boys, dating, and the social order at school; the mother is absolutely thrilled to discover that one of the daughter’s classmates, the son of the local weatherman (evidently a prestigious distinction in their world) thinks she’s a MILF.  I wish I could quote some lines of dialogue from this mini-play, which is so much more than a mere sketch, but it is funny and tender and gently satirical in equal measure.

Another scene involves a young man who’s about to have sex with a very willing young woman until he discovers that her political opinions are, for him, beyond the pale, and he decides he has too many moral scruples to screw.  The scene takes a surprising turn, but in essence, it’s about the huge degree of moral peer pressure on young people today, most of it driven by social media, to have the “correct” political positions.  But never mind that; the scene is just very, very funny. 

There is a recurring scene featuring a cartoonish Shirley Temple-type child performer (Claudia Martinez, who is very skilled at instantly switching modes from the innocent to the demonic) who is starved and force-fed amphetamines, and, when she breaks an ankle, is ready to be put down like a racehorse by her father, played by Tim Metzler.  Martinez’s over-the-top performance is exactly right in a role that could have been bathetic but instead is absurdly hilarious.

Metzler is a superb straight man, and is as well a talented mime, as in another sketch where he performs with near-balletic grace an Ariana Grande-inspired bottle-licking escapade in a deserted supermarket.  

Meghan Babbe also plays an incompetent Chicago Bears football player who has never actually played football before and isn’t really sure what it is.  Admittedly, this scene is less of a commentary on the human condition than a jab at the always-disappointing Bears themselves, but Babbe’s fumbling football player reminded me as well of certain incompetent work colleagues in years past who bumbled their way through jobs they were never qualified to hold.

Among the shows many other highlights is a wildly surreal bit in which Leila Gorstein — a hugely talented comic performer with a distinctive scampish quality — decides to marry herself, subsequently gives birth to herself, and eventually must contend with an army of bickering and battling clones.

In addition to Babbe, Martinez, Metzler and Gorstein, Jordan Savusa and Brittani Yawn also contribute hilarious bits.  The entire cast excels at audience participation, as in an extended bit where a real, live audience member (a sweet older lady from a small town in Maine whose hobby is knitting), becomes “embroiled” in a huge, global controversy about the mortal dangers and moral degradation of knitting that is reported on breathlessly by the jabbering dunderheads of Fox News, MSNBC and all the other vampiric cable news networks.  The entire audience gets involved, and one point, the lady from Maine is “punched” by Martinez, punches Martinez right back, and later punches her own son, seated right next to her.  (It’s only air-punching, but it’s at least as convincing as any given Rocky movie.)

There is far more to this delightful show, and nothing at all “etcetera” about most of the other scenes, except for a handful of blackouts that don’t quite land.  Directed by Jeff Griggs with musical direction (always a crucial role in any Second City production) by John Love, this is one show to which lovers of the human comedy will absolutely want to go.

Highly Recommended

Reviewed by Michael Antman

Presented by Second City e.t.c. at 230 W. North Avenue.

Tickets are available at the Second City box office, by phone at 312-337-3992, and at www.secondcity.com.

Additional information about this and other area productions can be found at www.theatreinchicago.com