LAUGH OUT PROUD hosted by Robert Keller, headlined by Jessica Kirson, with different guests (Yuk Yuks Downtown, 224 Richmond West). Runs to June 30, Friday-Saturday 8 pm. $25 (portion goes to 519 Community Centre). 416-967-6425, yukyuks.com. Rating: NNNN
There are so many first-rate queer comics around that I’m not sure a show like Yuk Yuk’s Laugh Out Proud is really needed. But it’s Pride weekend, and it’s refreshing to see a comedy venue outside the gay village acknowledge that with three nights of out comics just doing their thing.
Also, we should jump at any opportunity to see New York City’s Jessica Kirson headline. Her ferocious, take-no-prisoners act must be seen live to be believed. She’s a big woman – not just physically, but also vocally and emotionally. Big gestures. Big outbursts. Frightening roars. She’ll often grunt punchlines or growl like some monster, her malleable face twisting around like that of Don Rickles or perhaps a cartoon creature like The Little Mermaid’s Ursula the Sea Witch.
These are just physical flourishes, though. Kirson’s rapid-fire jokes are mostly disconnected observations that have something to do with her obsessions: eating carbs, low self-esteem (reflected in the way she angrily masturbates), whether the audience is enjoying her act.
A typical joke: “Oatmeal is healthy until you add six cups of brown sugar, and then it becomes pie.”
Kirson’s persona is so well-developed, her tone so perfect, she can simply blurt this out and make you fill in the stuff that comes before (“So I’ve been trying to lose weight…”). It’s been shaved down to the essentials.
She can toss off a statement (“I have a master’s in social work – of course I do, I’m a lesbian”) as if it’s an aside. Again, no further words are necessary.
Some of her longer jokes – about how depressing the song Happy Birthday sounds, for instance – show a bit more strain. And like Rickles, she isn’t afraid of sending up racial stereotypes, as in her take on UFO sightings by Southerners, Asians and black women which didn’t get the heartiest laughs.
Her funniest routines, however, are her occasional time-outs, where she turns her back to the audience and, as if she’s taking to her therapist, addresses her concerns about the crowd’s reaction, particularly what she considers a particularly undemonstrative guy in the front row.
Co-producer Robert Keller, nominated for a Tim Sims Encouragement Fund Award last year, makes an amiable host, even if he isn’t quite at home in front of the mic yet. Something about the timbre of his voice betrays some nerves. But on opening night, he delivered some timely jokes, including one very funny one about Rob Ford phoning the Pride Committee to take part in the parade. His Celine Dion impression remains very clever, and mid-show he delivered an amusing bit that sent up the idea of costume changes.
The lineup for the weekend’s shows will change, but on Thursday, Linda Ellis and Ted Morris delivered some decent material. I particularly liked Ellis’s two-part opener about her blood-alcohol level and Morris’s tips on how to get over the Canada-U.S. border quickly.
Ashley Moffatt, from the sketch troupe Cash Grab, shows a ton of promise. Her persona – a slightly off-kilter, wide-eyed baby dyke – is endearing, and so is the faux naive way she delivers her jokes. But there’s lots of intelligence in her biting observations.
