I was brought up on the British TV sketch comedy of the 1970s; above all Monty Python, so I ought to love sketch comedy, right?  I’ve actually been trying to rekindle some enthusiasm for it.  I went to Spotlight at Srcond City and last night I went to Sex T-Rex; the featured act of Sketchfest at the Theatre Centre.  It’s not working for me.  Sketch comedy has changed or I have changed and likely, honestly, both.  Bottom line it really doesn’t do it for me.

It’s not that the current show Crime After Crime (after crime) doesn’t have any merit.  It does.  It’s cleverly set up as the multi-generational saga of the Stone family; colourblind crime bosses of Crime City.  It’s inventive.  There’s a recurrent joke about defusing the bomb that’s about to go off but nobody can tell which wire is the red one.  It manages the mood change from 1940s noir to 1980s James Bond to more contemporary super-hero genre movies with a clever nod to Star Wars Along the way; to whit a starfighter pursuit crafted out of coat hangers.  The movement; goofy simulated car and boat chases is funny but in the end it couldn’t hold my attention for 90 minutes.  YMMV.

I think a bigger problem for me though is the “sketch scene”.  It’s loud and uncritical and boosterish.  It’s bad enough to be told to show up in good time and then be penned in a crowded anteroom with a bunch of very noisy people with the theatre doors not even opening until show time but the relentless boosterism afterwards is kind of jarring.  It even extends to acknowledging government sponsors.  Do we really need to holler and hoot for “Doug Ford’s Government of Ontario”?  Old fashioned me thought it was our government…

Maybe grumpy old me has become too noise averse and hypercritical.  If so, I think I can live with it.