Remember the name Emma Hunter. We saw her during last year’s Toronto Fringe in the sketch troupe She Said What, where she got big laughs, particularly as a dictatorial Napoleon Bonaparte. But we’d never seen her solo work.
All we can say is, we’re going to do everything we can to see her again and again.
Hunter literally stole the show from everyone else last Friday (June 29) at Bitch Salad Gives Back, the annual Pride edition of Andrew Johnston’s semi-regular (mostly) female comic showcase.
The pint-sized comic emerged onto the Buddies in Bad Times stage totally confident, ready to do impressions – sans costume changes.
She began with food guru Paula Deen – her face frozen in the celebu-chef’s manic smile – then, after pausing with her back to the crowd, turned into a completely smug and entitled Victoria Beckham and a gauche, nonsensical Céline Dion.
Calling Hunter’s work “impressions” cheapens what she does. She fully inhabits these celebrities, via voice, posture and attitude.
There are better Céline impersonators out there, but what Hunter does is capture the icon’s essence, through good writing in particular.
“The more famous I become, the less sense I make,” said Hunter, capturing in one zinger what we love and hate about the Quebec songstress.
Hunter’s range of targets was impressive, too: Khloé Kardashian, Pénélope Cruz (delivered in Spanish, with a great punchline), Kristen Stewart and, best of all, peroxide-blond Australian hairdresser Tabatha Coffey, nailed in a few, sharp, absurd, bitchy phrases.
Hunter intuitively knows that you’ve got to mix up the rhythm and length of her jokes. Her high-energy finale, a Carly Rae Jepsen number, ended with a mere two words that said more about our love-hate relationship with pop culture than a year’s supply of Us Weekly magazines.
Headliner (and equally brilliant character comic) Gavin Crawford obviously recognized Hunter’s talent, since he let her guest in one of his best bits, an extended scene involving Harry Potter’s Severus Snape (as played by Alan Rickman in the movies) doing stand-up.
Crawford also scored in his send-up of Rufus Wainwright, singing a song supposedly penned by Wainwright’s new daughter (after bragging about her genetic superiority) and then closing the show with a song about having sex with a woman.
The impeccably performed piece – every groan and fake giggle present and accounted for – was also beautifully written, so much so that the biggest joke depended on the final rhyming word.
Johnston, as usual, proved an excellent host, taking us through the year in queer with laughter (lots of Rob Ford, Tom Cruise and John Travolta jokes) and a wee bit of bad taste (it might have been too soon for an extended Luka Magnotta sequence).
Stand-ups Christina Walkinshaw and Julia Hladkowicz did well, although we’re not sure they’ve really found their comic personas. Walkinshaw’s jokes sometimes aren’t followed through it was a mistake to begin with a disorienting bit about working on a Korean military base. But her joke comparing her lady-scaping to remodelling the kitchen was clever.
Hladkowicz has a magnetic presence and seems comfortable onstage, using fine physicality to sell a joke about having an orgasm at a spinning class. There were some stumbles in an over-long bit about hipsters, but she barrelled through fearlessly.
We weren’t familiar with the night’s special guest, Shangela, from RuPaul’s Drag Race, but weren’t too impressed with her hectoring, hollering and self-congratulatory set that seemed more flash and sass than substance.
And the usually sharp Cheetoh Girls proved more uneven this time around, with some musical/video bits that killed (a reworked Summer Lovin’ featuring Travolta, multiple shots at Lindsay Lohan, a send-up of Lana Del Ray’s disastrous SNL outing) and others that merely seemed like killing time.
