Second City show is outshone by its cast
Click Bait & Switch (out of 4) By the company. Directed by Paul Bates. At the Second City Theatre, 51 Mercer St. 416-343-0011 or secondcity.com
Here’s a toast to the cast of Click Bait & Switch, the latest Second City show, which opened at Mercer St. on Tuesday night.
They’re really six of the funniest people you could hope to meet. Among them, Leigh Cameron, the sweetly smiling ditz who acts like she’s crocked on cooking sherry; Kyle Dooley, the long cool drink of water that’s probably laced with vodka; or Becky Johnson, the seemingly prim schoolmarm type who fuelled up on magic mushrooms just before the show.
Then there’s Etan Muskat as a coiled ball of comic energy with a bong hidden up his sleeve; Kristen Rasmussen, a demonic streak of sheer physical comedy fuelled on crystal meth and Kevin Whalen as the beguilingly befuddled dormouse who’s been sipping a brewski since sunrise.
Equating their performing skills with artificial stimulants isn’t just an extended metaphor but ultimately a reflection on the show’s central flaw, which is that the material isn’t as good as the people delivering it. Too often they have to hype themselves up to comedic warp speed without anything to back it up.
Sketch after sketch starts with a good idea (like a barbecue turning into a “shaming” festival) only to pe- ter out with no real ending.
One sequence about two billionaires in wheelchairs making random phone calls has a killer finish but takes a long time to get there.
True verbal wit or real satirical observation are in short supply, unless you count Johnson haughtily referring to lube as “the devil’s saliva” or Muskat announcing he’d like to be white so that “when I’m at the airport and I lose my s---, I don’t want to be detained, I want to be upgraded.”
There is also a hilarious sequence that arrives at the end of Act 1, when Rasmussen plays a girl so stoned she tries to match her dance moves to a DJ who’s behind a mash-up that goes from Swan Lake to Sarah McLachlan.
And you’ll cherish random bits of merriment, like Cameron singing her heart out about what it’s like to be a pie.
Or Whalen turning from a cute caterpillar into a totally confused butterfly.
But in the end, you leave with fragments of hilarity that director Paul Bates hasn’t yet found a way to transform into wholly realized pieces of comic gold.
Click Bait & Switch really should have been called Six Characters in Search of an Author.