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Friday, May 09, 2008

The Kids In The Hall "As Live As We'll Ever Be"



Tonight I got the chance to see The Kids In The Hall perform live at The Orpheum Theater in Downtown Los Angeles. I have been a fan of theirs since the early 90s. My high school years from 1991 to 1994 were pretty much spent quoting lines from the show, watching Twin Peaks, and being a disgruntled misunderstood teen. Well, I'm not a teen anymore.

I've never been to The Orpheum Theater before and damn this place was beautiful. I love the feel of an old vaudville theater. Apparently Judy Garland performed there at the beginning of her career. I took pics with my cell phone but for some reason they won't load.



My seat was about 6 rows from the stage in the Orchestra section. It was fantastic! I brought in a notebook with me to keep track of what they did.

When the show finally started, the lights dimmed and an announcer's voice told the audience that to understand how they decided to tour, you need to see the meeting they had before the touring started. This video then started to play on the screen at the back of the stage:



When the sketch ended, Kevin came running out on stage in his underwear and an apple in his mouth. He was chased by Marc, Dave, Bruce, and Scott. He threw the apple into the audience and then they all bowed to the audience, everyone was cheering.

On with the show!

The first sketch involved Dave and Kevin playing a married couple, Kevin being the wife. They were visiting their friends, couple played by Marc and Bruce. Bruce played the wife who just had a baby. The baby was a hateful baby. This sketch was completely new material and had original characters not seen on the show before. It was pretty damn funny. I'll try to not give too much info for those people who might be reading this who have yet to see them perform live but are planning to during this tour. I'm looking at you, San Francisco!

The next sketch brought Scott Thompson out as Buddy Cole. The crowd went nuts! He sat down at his stool, sipped his martini, and proceeded to explain to everyone how Jesus Christ was actually a homosexual. He then read from The Bible: The King James Musical Version.



The next sketch involved some of my favorite characters from the show. Bruce and Marc came out as the inspirational salesmen dressed in suits. I don't remember the characters' names. But they were hysterical in selling the new product the "Gut Spigot". It's purpose, to suck the fat out of American's bellies and then use that fat to fuel cars to get us off of our dependency on oil. You could see they were having a lot of fun in this one and Bruce kept cracking up.



Then Kevin and Dave played two drunks in a bar during last call. Dave explains he has a time machine and travels back in time every three minutes so the bar never closes. Kevin doesn't believe him. Dave then travels back in time by putting on a helmet thing behind a white sheet at the back of the stage and comes back three minutes in the past to order another beer.

We then find Kevin and Marc as Jehovas Witnesses who come to a house where Bruce answers dressed as Gavin. Priceless. One of the highlights for me. I'm sure you know where this scenario is going.

After this sketch, Kevin then came out with a guitar and sang to the audience a song he never finished writing. He explained it was because they cut some scenes last minute so they didnt want to end the show early. Sad, cuz I would have loved to see Hecubus live.

Scott and Bruce then came out in a sketch bringing back Kathy and Cathy. I never remember which one is the one with the K and which one is the C. They meet at a restaurant and Bruce's Cathy admits to being on a new diet. The Crystal Meth diet. Another insanely funny sketch here.

The next was a monologue by Marc McKinney spoken in a film noir style and I swear to God this was a monologue featured on the show in Season 3 o 4.

From here, we are brought to the next video projected on the big screen at the back of the stage. For those of you who have yet to see this, I now present to you Carfuckers:



We're then on to the next live sketch which features Dave who comes to Kevin because he suspects his imaginary girlfriend is cheating on him. It turns out she is, because Kevin is imagining her too and professed his undying love for her in his mind.

Scott then came out as the redneck thug character he played in many sketches on the original show. Him and Marc proceeded to perform this sketch live:



The only real difference I noted was at the end of the sketch, the chicken lady shot bouncing balls out of her crotch which was supposed to signify eggs.

We then find Bruce and Dave in a sketch. Bruce plays Dave's wife and they sit next to each other with a blanket covering their laps. Bruce then says, "It's your Bday. BJ for your Bday!" and then gets to it under the blanket. She (Bruce) then says to Dave how she finds it to be so pro feminist of him to accept just one blow job a year. He then excuses himself and walks to the back of the stage and puts on the time machine helmet and travels back in time 3 minutes.

The next sketch involved all the kids in a very gay sketch involving canadian gay marriage, Marc as a professor with a weird accent, and Bruce as Inga the Swedish drink trollop who only knows how to speak in baby talk.

This was followed by Bruce coming out in a piano tie. There's 80s disco/hip hop music playing. He starts rapping and dancing showing how he danced from 8th grade to 11th grade. He is then joined by Marc and Kevin who are dressed as 80s teenage girls and then Scott and Dave in acid washed jean jackets as teenage boys from the 80s. It turned into a massive rapping dance fest. Hysterical!



We are back to Dave in his time machine but this time tries to do something meaningful and travels back in time to Germany to kill Hitler. He meets Hitler who is still a young art student and off handedly puts it in his mind that he hates Jews after Hitler buys him a beer.

Then Kevin comes out and introduces Rick McCluster: SuperDrunk played by Bruce with his sidekick The Bartender played by Dave. This was one of my favorite sketches of the night. The more drunk Rick McCluster gets, the more his super powers show themselves. His sidekick is always there in a bowling shirt and a martini shaker. Marc played the villain and Scott was the damsel in distress.

This led to the show ending and the kids getting a standing ovation. Of course they came out with an amazing encore which entailed Marc as the headcrusher. He brought out a camera and proceeded to crush random audience members' heads before bringing out his prisoners, the other four kids, and proceeded to rip on each of them until he finished them off by crushing their heads. Until finally he was left to finish himself off and crush his own head.





This followed another standing ovation and the end of the show. Fucking brilliant. I'm so glad I went. I would refer anyone to go see them live. I hope what I read was true that they are working on new material and possibly a sequel to Brain Candy.

That's the end of this recap/review. I'm spent.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Well that was quite the recap. So jealous!