YUK YOU, PANDEMIC
City comedy clubs rejoice in return after year on ice
He had no clue what he was about to say — but Jon Laster was excited, even emotional, about being given the chance to say it.
Laster was the first performer on Friday to tell jokes for a New York audience inside a comedy club in more than a year. While many spots reopened (at one-third capacity) — Jerry Seinfeld kicked off Gotham Comedy Club’s night — it was the Comedy Cellar, the city’s most iconic club, that launched the first laughs.
“Every one of our comedians wanted to be here tonight,” said Comedy Cellar owner Noam Dworman. “There was a little of every emotion. Some people were getting choked up.”
Dworman offered 12 shows in four locations, starting with a 5 p.m. set at its main stage on MacDougal St. Beside the limited attendance, the two nods to the pandemic were plastic barriers between tables and a clean mic for each comedian. Some in the audience wore masks at the beginning but all were maskless by the set’s end.
There was a giddiness beforehand, with crowds lining up outside and comedians effusively greeting each other; Laster, one of the last comedians in New York to perform live indoors last year on March 15 — even asked a Comedy Cellar employee to take a picture of him out front.
“This is special, it’s historic moment,” Laster said, adding that as emcee of the first show he was “just gonna find the jokes” by reading the room. “I want to see what the energy is like, if people are excited or crying.”
The crowd cheered heartily when he announced, “We are back,” a phrase used repeatedly by enthusiastic comedians during the night. Laster’s first joke, in response to echo and feedback, turned out to be about how someone messed up the microphones while everyone was gone.
Much of the material revolved around the pandemic, with bits on Black Lives Matter, the Jan. 6 insurrection and the Biden presidency thrown in for good measure.
Laster talked about how Blacks are skeptical of government vaccination because of the racist Tuskegee Study, but when a friend speculated that they might be implanting chips in people, Laster said, “You work in a bodega, you smoke weed and play PlayStation. After two days, the government would come by and say, that chip cost $50,000, can we get it back?”
“Saturday Night Live” alum Colin Quinn (inset) talked about how his nephew got “an A in math but a D- in lighting.”
The joke bombed, which prompted mock exasperation from Quinn, the most established of the comedians, who earned more chuckles just by working his way out of that hole.
The crowd was primed for laughs, said Ian Fidance, who hosted the 5:15 show upstairs at the Olive Tree Cafe. “People were really ready to have a good time.”
“I’ve never been so excited to root for someone,” agreed Brianna Nordlander afterward. Nordlander, 33, was there with her husband, Sverker, 35, and their friends, Darren Borrino, 43 and Sarah Fowler, 33. “
It was great, we felt like we were part of history,” said Sverker Nordlander, 35.
Businesswise, the new rules are “a disaster,” both because of the capacity and the 11 p.m. curfew, Dworman said, but he agreed that it’s wise to play it safe. Dworman said he hopes to get stimulus money and aid from Save Our Stages to offset the losses he’s suffered. He knew he had to reopen.
“This was about the comedy community, which is based here. It would have made my skin crawl to see them go someplace else.”
Fidance said the comedians and the audience shared an energy that “was like Christmas Eve combined with the first day of school.”
“For comedians, it’s about being onstage again,” Laster said. “That energy doesn’t exist anywhere else.”