Review: CHAOS THEORY OF EVERYTHING at The Second City E.t.c.

The Second City e.t.c.’s CHAOS THEORY OF EVERYTHING is a potpourri of comedy. While some past e.t.c. revues have loosely unified around a theme, CHAOS describes this one well. It’s a little bit of everything. As with past Second City revues, that means some of the jokes really land...and some don’t. With direction from Anthony LeBlanc, returning company members Meghan Babbe, Jenelle Cheyne, Javid Iqbal, and Tim Metzler are joined by newcomers Spencer Hodges and Max Thomas. This ensemble mixes it up with some topical/political sketches and some evergreen ones. 

CHAOS THEORY OF EVERYTHING also has a number of Chicago-specific moments — inside jokes for the city, if you will. While that shouldn’t deter tourists from attending, I thought that gave this revue some real personality. See: A particularly funny interstitial scene in which Cheyne, Hodges, and Metzler enact a CTA train ride out of nightmares. 

The interstitial scenes are some of the strongest overall. A LORD OF THE RINGS interstitial invokes “JD Gollum Vance” (liberals like me will be right at home with the political humor), while another involves a bratty kid complaining about being bullied on the playground (you can imagine who that might be). I think these brief one-joke scenes work especially well because the ensemble can just do a bit and move on.

As usual, I was likewise impressed by the scenes involving improvisation and audience participation. On opening night, Babbe and Cheyne made great work of the audience suggested topic “vaccines” as hosts Char and Jar of a fictitious Chicago talk show (with Hodges playing their exasperated production manager). Babbe and Cheyne took the suggestion and really ran with it. An act two sketch recapped a made-up soap opera episode that relied on extensive participation from a game audience member. While the sketch wasn’t the most inventive, I appreciated how the ensemble really rallied around the audience participant. 

The full length sketches didn’t all work. But the ones that worked, really worked. Babbe and Iqbal are particularly great as mother and son in an act one sketch following an eighth grade dance. Iqbal slumps into the car on the way home — and makes immediately clear that he’s a Joe Rogan-listening incel in the making. The sketch is a sharp and funny interpretation of that particular breed of white masochistic male — the insight being that if you think too hard about it, it’s scary that an impressionable eighth grader has already gone down that path. It’s topical, but not preachy.

In the second act, Cheyne takes on one of the most physical sketches of night (though there’s not much physical comedy throughout) in which she plays Benny the Bull...having a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day. In another evergreen sketch, Hodges really commits to the bit as a wannabe actor using the stand in a small claims traffic court case as her audition tape. The sketch is purely silly, but that’s why it’s successful. 

Not all of the jokes land. Iqbal plays a purposefully bad stand-up comedian in one...but even if the jokes are intentionally unfunny, they’re still not funny. A “surprise party” sketch wears out its welcome. Metzler gamely plays “Periwinkle Brunchtime Detective” in another — he literally (and hilariously) gags at the crime scene when Cheyne reveals a dead body, but then the ending of the sketch devolves.

While CHAOS THEORY OF EVERYTHING isn’t consistently must-see comedy, I savored the enjoyable moments, and I liked the overall lightheartedness. 

CHAOS THEORY OF EVERYTHING plays an open run at The Second City e.t.c. Tickets start at $39.

Photo Credit: Timothy M. Schmidt

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