By: Janet Preus
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| Joe Tanner, "The Lowry Mailman" - Photo from Minnehaha Comedy Club website |
Saturday’s line-up featured Orensteen himself; Joe Tanner, “the Lowry Mailman” (he really is); local comic, Scott Brady; and headliner Chris Shaw, who moved here by way of New York and Los Angeles.
Tanner’s regular guy persona and jokes about his North Minneapolis route were a great fit for the crowd. Brady, though a gifted writer, didn’t quite pull off the timing, or have the persona to deliver the right goods. With his smart jokes and a feel for the audience, Orensteen, however, could bump it up a notch or two and really have something.
But Shaw is brilliant. His show doesn’t so much flow as it careens from the moment he comes tearing onstage, tugging on his sweater hem like a distracted four-year-old, marching through a phenomenal catalogue of facial expressions, punctuated with whoops for no reason that I could think of. But we laughed!
This guy is the real deal with his own jokes and punch lines, drawn from his own experiences and localized for a decidedly Minnesota crowd. For an hour, Shaw held his audience with a mix of visual hooks, off-beat jokes and great timing, using his mic, mic-stand and stool as props like the improvisational acting pro that he is.
The audience kept laughing long after a joke, catching up to the inanity over and over. Shaw kept this rolling with just enough references to earlier jokes without beating us over the head with them. Even though he slyly slipped from a General content rating to the occasional “R,” it was without the predictable shock jokes and endless stream of profanity. What a relief.
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| Chris Shaw - Photo from Minnehaha Comedy Club website |
I loved that he is a skilled actor who never had to prove to us just how skilled he is. Insecure performers make us uncomfortable because they are too aware of how much we like, or don’t like, them. I said them, not the performance. Forget that! Shaw nails it from every evaluative measure I can think of, and I scrutinize, dig for motivation and practically stopwatch the timing on the jokes.
Keeping that wacky character for a full hour was impressive. It started to slip in intensity toward the ending, but by that time the schtick was well-established and any persona he tried would still have been this wacko guy, as far as the audience was concerned.
No squirming. We just relaxed and laughed. And laughed, and laughed, and laughed. It felt good. The non-ending rollercoaster could have easily kept going if the bar hadn’t closed at 10 p.m. Speaking of which, why is the bar closing at 10 p.m. on a Saturday night? Not that the service was all that good. We got our own drinks and were never approached by the scowling wait staff. In fact, the bar seemed completely unaware of how to handle a full house. I’m assuming they’re going to work this fundamental out; Steak & Ale has a potential goldmine in this show if they can just deliver on their part of the deal.
Location Info:
Steak & Ale Bloomington
Artist Info: Minnehaha Comedy Club
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