Best Damn Holiday Show

The second Go Comedy! original holiday sketch show, Best Damn Holiday Show, is largely grounded in the here and now. Current events figure prominently in the production's few dozen sketches; add to that the severity of Michigan's particular hardships, and this is one holiday offering that looks for its humor in dark, bleak places.

Framing the nearly 90-minute production is a pair of sketches in which the cast's attempts to sing an original Christmas tune are repeatedly shut down by imperious killjoys — as the Go Comedy! space used to be a Secretary of State office, bureaucratic equal-opportunity political correctness still applies. The song's repeatedly amended, increasingly vague lyrics are quite sharp, pushing the absurd concept to its limit; it's an effective mechanism to set up a show that strives to be about more than just Christmas. Between these bookends lie much more diverse characters and places, but the topical feel largely remains. Rumination on the lousy presents of a down economy, a visit with the rescued Chilean miners, and a sketch pitching hot new toys to kids of various stereotyped Michigan cities deny escapism, priming the viewer for a scathing closing medley that skewers everything in sight.

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Thursdays at Go Comedy!

There's a lot going on during the three time slots of Go Comedy!'s August Thursdays: improv, a reboot, a sequel, even a hot tub. The visually distinct and conceptually unique offerings highlight the difference between a three-hour show and three shows in as many hours: where the former can sometimes feel like eating a novelty-sized giant hamburger, the latter is akin to a long encampment at a buffet — and what a spread.

Although Thursday is Go's sole night for scripted fare, some improvisation tends to seep in at the edges, and here is no exception. One time slot is supplemented by a short set from members of the weekend All-Star Showdown — the All-Star Grab Bag, as they call themselves, engage in a loose long-form style in which suggestions are simply reflections of the preceding scenes. In the absence of the competitive format and structured improv games, the improvisers use the basics of relationship and conflict to build a hit-and-miss flow of scenes (with more hits than misses). Flight 1977 returns in its late-night slot, in which Pj Jacokes, Bryan Lark, and Matt Naas essentially play themselves and improvise a conversation on an airplane. It's like My Dinner With Andre, if Andre and Wallace Shawn had made jokes about Cedar Point and 1980s fads. The unconventional form allows these three funny people to let the conversation simply drift, confident that it will land in some very amusing places.

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Thursdays at Go Comedy!

Part of the reason why my most recent Thursday at Go Comedy! seemed to pass at a quicker clip (despite its similar running time) is the presentation of two shows instead of three. More of the reason is that the second of the two offerings is a film. Although I don't plan to migrate into film criticism, this review is entitled "Thursdays at Go Comedy!," so here goes.

The 8 PM time slot belongs to the original comedy Space Fight. Written and directed by Pete Jacokes and Jen Hansen, the 40-minute sketch production presents a skewed view of the Star Wars narrative. The show opens with video of a subtitled toddler babbling her lopsided understanding of the story, and scene changes feature projected images of children's drawings of characters and scenes from the films. While cute and amusing, the through-a-child's-eyes take doesn't completely gel with the story lines of the live sketches: the conventionally heroic Rebel forces being composed of local yokels, Darth Vader attempting a softer leadership style, and workaday slackers musing about the Empire from the apolitical outskirts of the conflict. The plot of the original trilogy is merely alluded to from the periphery of the action, a sort of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead to Star Wars's Hamlet. As with most spoof productions, it appears the better the viewer knows the source material, the more there is to appreciate.

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Thursdays at Go Comedy!

On its one night dedicated to scripts and sketches, Go Comedy! keeps a rotating stable of shows, with at least one new offering each month. This considerable strength of keeping the material fresh is tempered by drawbacks, the major ones being theme and flow: with staggered opening and closing dates, it's unlikely that the show(s) in the 8:00 hour of any given Thursday will complement the 9:00 programming, and so on into the 10:00 late shift. Viewers should take it as a given that variety is the word of the night, and expect to be drawn in more by some shows than by others.

Debuting in May and running through June is Bro. Dude. Bro., written by Garrett Fuller and directed by Bryan Lark. Fuller and Jamen Spitzer are Beezy and Diesel, respectively, once an inseparable pair of club rats and gym rats given to drinking, fighting, and being overwhelmingly unlikable. (They're the kind of people perfect for reality TV: great fun to watch, so long as one doesn't have to interact with them.) Now Diesel, fresh off a prison stay and probation time, is father to an infant girl and trying to make something of his life. Spitzer plays his role with understatement and a serious streak, in glaring contrast to Fuller's caricature, although the latter's over-the-top approach makes possible a dance-cry scene that is ludicrously funny. The play feels a little long, like Fuller wanted to plug these not-all-that-deep characters in too many scenarios, but the committed performances and the clever use of the Go Comedy! space keep it moving.

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Thursdays at Go Comedy!

Thursday nights at Go Comedy! occur in one-hour increments. Come at 8, 9, or 10 PM, and stay as long as you like. See one show for ten bucks, or see all three shows for ten bucks. Brief intermission-like breaks in between allow plenty of time to reset or to mingle with the performers, who hang out at the bar. Thursdays are easygoing, casual. Mind you, once on the stage, these aren't the Not-Ready-For-Weekend-Timeslot Players; this blend of Go regulars and area professionals has comedy prowess to spare.

At this shrine to improvisation, Thursdays were originally set aside for sketch comedy. The new lineup remains scripted, but has let go of the sketch concept for the time being in favor of three short plays, all written by local artists, and all with some flavor of comedy (c'mon, they're not going to rename the theater Go Drama! just for Thursday night). At 8:00, The Opal Show is restaged from BoxFest Detroit '09, written by Kim Carney and directed by Shannon Ferrante. The 9:00 spot belongs to Hobo, originally written and directed by Tim Robinson for the Planet Ant, now with a new cast and direction by Tommy LeRoy. Finally, Michelle LeRoy's brand-new Dial R for Radio Drama at 10:00 is billed as an "experimental improvised show," in which the script of the radio play can't account for what happens off the page.

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