Review: PILLOW TALK Finds Soft Spot Among the Shadowbox Live Crowd

“Comedy is the art of making people laugh without making them puke.”

-Steve Martin

Out of all the forms of entertainment a reviewer writes about, comedy is the hardest. There are so many different genres, so many assorted styles, so many different methods of delivering a joke. The late Sam Kinnison might be hilarious to some people, and offensive to others. Flight of the Conchords might induce some to peals of laughter and produce snores of boredom in others.

PILLOW TALK, a collection of Shadowbox Live’s best skits of the past year, hits the right notes for a variety of patrons. Produced and directed by Julie Klein, the two-act mixture of rock and roll and comedy opened Jan. 5 and runs through April 13 at the troupe’s stage at 503 S. Front Street in downtown Columbus.

PILLOW TALK consists of eight sketches and five video “commercials” which were composed by Shadowbox Live’s crack writing team, SCRAWL. Those are mixed among live music of the house band. (Think of it as an episode of Saturday Night Live, only funnier and with a strong musical act.) Now SNL might not seem to be everyone’s cup of Earl Grey, but PILLOW TALK did press the right buttons for its opening week crowd.

While it avoids the political pratfalls of SNL, Shadowbox is not for puritanical prudes. Nearly all of the sketches and three of the parody ads grapple with sexual content. If you are offended by that, stay at home.

Some skits are spot on. “Cheat Day” stars Leah Haviland and Jimmy Mak, as a married couple. Haviland has the 17th on her calendar marked off as a “cheat day.” Mak assumes that involves only his wife not counting calories on her diet. It soon escalates to tax evasion, trysting with Jamie Barrow and a threesome with Emily O’Regan.

Another crowd favorite is “Doll Therapy,” in which Amy Lay serves as a preschooler dispensing some very adult advice to the toys in her room. She recommends Cookie Monster (Andy Ankrom) might find happiness if he doesn’t eat his feelings with carbohydrates. Later she helps Barbie (Riley Mak) and Ken (TJ Galamba) balance their tenuous relationship and Ken’s growing paranoia over Barbie’s “friend,” G.I. Joe (David Whitehouse).

Dispersed between the skits are faux commercials created by Whitehouse and Zach Tarantelli. In “Apple Watch,” an ominous voice warns listeners that the wearer has sustained a serious fall at 3:45 a.m. in the Applebee’s parking lot. “He told friends he could do a backflip off a trash dumpster. He could not.” The ad concludes with a Big Brotherish tagline: “The Apple Watch is always watching. Always.”
While the Apple Watch ad works because of its subtlety, the “Fireworks for F*ckin,” thrives because of Jimmy Mak’s bombastic delivery that lies somewhere between a spastic car dealer and a World Wrestling Federation promoter. The pandering product promises to provide pyrotechnics for people’s next procreation performance.

In its nine songs, guitarists Justin Doe & Jack Walbridge, bassist Andy Ankrom, drummer Mario Slagle, keyboardist Rick Soriano and leader Matthew Hahn provide a rocking soundtrack for a revolving door of vocalists. Riley Mak opens the show by ripping through Joan Jett’s “I Hate Myself for Loving You.” Fifteen minutes later, Whitehouse augments the band on violin, as Galamba drifts through a trippy, hypnotic version of Dave Matthew’s “Crush.” Haley Keller and Breanna Romer close out the first set with a dreamy version of Berlin’s “Take My Breath Away,” as a video screen projects images of romantic scenes from Eighties movies like TOP GUN, FOOTLOOSE, DIRTY DANCING and SAY ANYTHING. It is amazingly effective and moving.

The second act, the band transforms again for Nyla Nyamweya’s cover of Maneskin’s “Beggin” and Jamie Barrow and Gordon Perkin’s take on Tenacious D’s “Tribute” before closing the show with Mary Randle’s earth-quaking version of Aerosmith’s “Walk This Way.”

Shadowbox’s greatest strength is its ability to include all its cast members in the spotlight. Ash Davis, Michelle Daniels, Gordon Perkins, Katy Psenicka, and Keith Queener show off their skills in the skits and songs.

While Shadowbox Live’s brand of comedy may miss some people’s mark on a handful of skits, its mixture of songs, sketches, and parodies should find the target enough to make the show worthwhile with nearly every patron.

Photo credit Jeffrey Buzz Crisafulli

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