I had the privilege of working Front of House for the very talented first year comedy students’ Archival Show over the past few nights.  While they seemed anxious, excited, proud & stoked – I felt calm and reflective.  It reminded me of the simpler times – of my own first year…

(Flashback to Brie’s First Year Archival Show Performance)

Well, that was fun.  Now.  Back to the present.

I wish I’d taken home each of the programs so I could have pointed out which of the performances stood out to me, but I’m forgetful and I didn’t do that.  I guess I can point out some points I noticed overall about the performances – I’ll do it in order of how I saw them:

1)  Team Melody: What I would have given to be in this performance!  An ode to vaudeville with great little snippets & bits all throughout, each just as fun as the last.  Lots of individual stage-time for many people in the cast, lots of singing AND a LOT of great parts & focus for the LADY performers!  It flowed so nicely.  And Monty Python’s Penis Song was in there.  Hilarious.  I left singing that Eva Tanguay song for hours upon hours after both nights Melody’s group was performing, which I suppose is good and bad.  OMG the Bored Room sketch.  Too much.  SO good.  And the Lie Detector sketch.  LOVE Mr. Show.

2) Team Eric/Christel: Reminded me loads of our performance last year, structure-wise (which makes sense, considering the Tothmeister directed my section.) BUT… our transitions were better.  I’m just kidding.  But we had that weird onesie Bruno was crabwalking around in– However, this year they had an exceptionally well-choreographed Thriller transition, which was rather impressive. The Lumberjack song – a classic!   It was also fun to see the Lawrence Welk song revisited – and as funny as it was to see a lanky dude in drag, I still couldn’t get the image of Camille Cote out of my head singing around and chasing bubbles.   Oh, and OMG the Hunger Strike sketch is amazing.  LOVE Mr. Show.

3) Team Baumander:   Lewis’ group seemed more, disciplined, more sharp.  Does that make sense?  I don’t know.  All I know is that adding the CSI intro to the Wayne & Shuster bit was a stroke of genius.  And the Smothers Brothers song was super well done!  The Jerry Lewis opening was FANTASTIC!  Holy cow!  It seems that some people were more heavily featured in this group than the others.  You would see some performers a lot more than others.  I’d be curious to know Lewis’ decision-making process for allocating roles.  It was fun, again, to see some of the performances revisited from last year ie: the Marx Brothers one (well done!), Bronx Beat (still heard Rachel & Camille in my head the whole time) and the Hail Satan one, thought not my favorite… I just wanted to make sure I mentioned that I LOVE Mr. Show!

All in all, the performances were very well done and SO much fun to watch.  First years should congratulate yourselves on a job well done – and a good chunk of dough raised for LAMP.  I’m glad to have been part of the whole thing. 🙂

And now I’m filled with the desire to research and watch some classic archival sketch comedy over the reading week break!