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Culture Stage

Deep thoughts

We’ve been following the sketch troupe Asiansploitation for several years now, and keep waiting for them to reach that next level – one where they develop a natural rhythm to their sketches and finally find their voice, both as individual members and as a troupe.

Their latest show, Asiansploitation Goes Deep, is an improvement, but they could be even better if that took that word “deep” literally. As with a lot of sketch comics, their premises are promising, but they’re not followed through and often surprise only in their abrupt endings. Sharper writing would help so would better diction.

Still, there are some good things in the show, which enjoyed a healthy run at the George Ignatieff last week.

One standout sketch involves a group called the Angry Race Issues Street Cred Players, in which a rapper breaks down all the injustice he’s facing while his two backup performers gradually get louder with their racist taunts. It’s a clever, funny bit – it could be a recurring one, in fact – that criticizes both the predominant culture and self-righteous activist art.

The troupe skewers political correctness in another fine sketch involving a deaf McDonald’s employee (James Cheng) who’s treated with condescension by everyone around him. It’s the only sketch that has a big payoff at the end.

One scene in which a funeral director (Cheng again) takes on the voice of a dead woman to please her nephew (Franco Nguyen) attempts to add emotional depth, but the staging (by director Andrew Currie) does it no favours and the blackout line doesn’t work.

Too many bits suffer from bad endings. One about a gymnast showing off her moves (Andrea James Lui, who has great physical presence in this and other scenes) ends with a joke that was there from the beginning, while a sketch about a woman (Lana Carillo) with a thing for religious types feels inconsequential.

Carillo is a jewel in the cast, particularly in one scene where she sweetly delivers a power ballad and it’s revealed she’s a dangerous stalker. Cheng, Darrel Gamotin and Lui also get to shine.

The troupe shows lots of range thanks to some direct address material, singing, dancing and a couple of cute recurring bits. (We could have done without the stupid MMA sketch scenes, however.)

Now let’s hope they learn how to tighten their future shows.

Dom delivers

Dom Pare proved last week at Yuk Yuk’s Downtown why he’s one of the best new stand-ups around. His material is impeccably written and delivered with complete authority. Physically, he might resemble a taller, angrier Michael Cera, but there’s nothing wimpy about his act.

In a way, his material draws on his unassuming demeanour. His persona is that of a regular guy who’s just trying to figure out the rules to live by. He ponders the difference between how women and men cry, contrasts how different it is to talk to women and play a video game, and in one of his best sequences, discusses the power dynamic that goes on when he’s nearly assaulted at an ATM.

His bit on this latter topic – in which he turns the table on a mugger – is classic, and it gets the audience completely on his side. He uses that to deliver one of the freshest, most unpredictable lines of the night when he goes over what he wishes he’d told his unsuccessful assailant.

Some of his segues are rough, and the headlining set seemed to end abruptly it seemed like he could have gone on for another half-hour. But what he did deliver was at such a high level that it didn’t matter.

On Thursday night, he got solid support from MC Dave Martin and a mixed bag of comics, with veterans Ted Morris and Michael Gelbart doing solid work and Alex Pavone and Danny Mendlow promising great things to come.

Artist to watch

The winners of the Toronto Arts Foundation Awards won’t be announced until next Thursday, June 21, at the Mayor’s Arts Lunch, when a lot of the pre-awards talk will be on whether the mayor will show up at all.

But everyone in the local theatre community will be cheering on writer and actor Daniel Karasik, who’s up for the prestigious RBC Emerging Artist Award. The writer of SummerWorks hits The Innocents and In Full Light is coming off a great year, having won the CBC Literary Award For Fiction and the Canadian Jewish Playwriting Competition. His latest play, Haunted, debuts in August at SummerWorks.

Karasik is up for the $7,500 prize along with visual artist Chris Curreri and multidisciplinary artist and poet Sandy Pool. torontoartsfoundation.org

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