Positive vibes for The 6 at Second City
The Hotline Always Blings Twice (out of 4) Created by the Second City mainstage company. Directed by Chris Earle. Until July 3 at Second City Toronto, 51 Mercer St. secondcity.com or 416-343-0011
Is it just us or do Torontonians have a lot to feel especially smug about lately? Americans keep saying they’re going to move here, the Blue Jays are on the cusp of a new season, the world’s most popular musical artists are from here, and we have two baby pandas and an even cuter prime minister.
Even Second City Toronto is feeling the sunny days, since their new sketch comedy show, The Hotline Always Blings Twice, gives off some pretty positive vibes throughout its scenes — which tackle everything from Facebook unfriending to the current quality of Canadian political discourse under Justin Trudeau — despite some truly off-kilter, off-colour and hilarious humour. In fact, this team is strongest when both the light and the dark are amped up to the extreme.
The best example, and one of the best sketches of the night, is a scene between a father (Kevin Whalen) and his 9-year-old daughter (Kirsten Rasmussen), spending her birthday at her first Blue Jays game. Sitting next to them is a season-ticket holder and lifelong Jays fan (Kyle Dooley) who’s allergic to any pack-minded activity (including the wave) and admonishes them both for skipping out on the hard years of fandom.
Dooley shines when his baseball fan really digs into his antagonistic personality, taking pride in his cynicism in a way that skewers the kind of person that feels it’s their personal task to ruin someone else’s fun.
But Whalen elevates the scene on a rant that’s a little predictable but upsettingly uproarious in his delivery; by going to darker places he shows Dooley’s character the bright side of being a good sport.
That’s not the only way this Second City cast uses dark material to spread positivity. They also demonstrate it with a Syrian refugee’s show-and-tell speech (again Whalen, who’s a real standout in this revue) and an opening monologue by Etan Muskat that encourages Canada to build a wall to keep anti-Trump Americans out — sure, Tim Hortons and the CBC aren’t the same as Starbucks and Hollywood, but they’re ours.
That speech is also the only time we hear a joke about Drake, the famous rapper who turned the Real Jerk into a nightclub with Rihanna, bestowed upon us our numerical nickname and created the meme-inspiring song “Hotline Bling.” While the song and Drake himself play minor roles in this revue, perhaps the themes in “Hotline Bling” are more influential; in one early scene, a college fresh- man has a run-in with a formerly nice girl who has started to go out, drink and dance with new friends: It’s just not the girl you’d expect.
But the title’s other inspiration, The Postman Always Rings Twice, appears in its own film-noir-style love triangle between a young woman (Leigh Cameron, whose best quality is her ability to tailor her voice from a femme fatale to a deep growl) and two options for automotive trans- portation that vie for her attention.
Directed by Chris Earle, not all sketches hit with the same punch, but the ones that do are so strong they could probably hold their own show. I would gladly follow Dooley’s baseball fan or an older, New Yorker-reading couple with a few secrets (Whalen and newest cast member Becky Johnson, just as impressive with her physicality as her wit) any day.