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Friday, April 13, 2012

Comedy / Bridgetown Bridgetown Comedy: (Part of) The Best of Boston

Posted by Marjorie Skinner on Fri, Apr 13, 2012 at 12:14 PM

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My evening got off to a rocky start last night when my fiancé got t-boned on his motorcycle—he's a little banged up, but intact—so I was ready for some levity by the time I got down to Day One of the Bridgetown Comedy Fest. This year's program doesn't include the handy dandy schedule, and frankly its listings by performer are kinda useless for navigation, especially when, like me, Bridgetown is less about tracking down comics I'm already familiar with and more about wandering around to the less-hyped shows looking for that hilarious underdog that no one's heard of yet. I hear that before I got there they were handing out separate sheets with the night's schedule on them, but by the time I got there the staff was hoarding what were apparently their last three copies. So, to the iPhone it is.

My haphazard strategy led me to the in-progress Best of Boston showcase at the Bagdad, where it was pointed out by somebody onstage that "this isn't Boston. Who gives a fuck?" The crowd was pretty thin, but enthusiastic and receptive. "The little crowd that could," as we were dubbed. I caught complete sets of Jono Zalay, Jay Larson, Dwayne Perkins, and Shane Mauss. Of those the two I'd maybe seek out again are Larson and Perkins.

Larson was the only dude who had a noticeably Bostonian accent, and his jokes about pranking people were the funniest bits of the evening. The best was when he got a phone call from someone in New York who had the wrong number. It was a dude looking for "Brad" who was pissed off about some kind of budget that had gone from $15,000 to $10,000. Larson ran with it, making up shit as he went along, and amazingly the dude totally bought it. Days later he called back to bust him. Obviously, Larson didn't give a shit. HILAR. He's on again twice tonight (7 at Helium, 10 at the Bossanova main room) and again on Saturday (7 at the Hawthorne Theater main room).

Perkins' was the only African American of what I saw of the set, and as opposed to last year when every single comedian of color had a bit about Portland Whiteness (in fact there weren't any jokes about Portland at all, which is really unusual for this fest—maybe a memo went out, or maybe Portlandia already ruined the potential)—not that that isn't deserved—the closest he got was a pretty charming impression of white people dancing to hiphop, and how he wished he had that kind of freedom instead of being bound to constraints when he danced, such as the beat. It was pretty good update on an old saw. He's on tonight (8 pm at the Hawthorne), Saturday (7 at Hawthorne Theater Main) and Sunday (8 at the Eagles Lodge).

I really only dipped my toe in the massive schedule of performances last night (I had to go see Bear in Heaven too), but there's a whole lot of festival left. As ever, the best thing to do is spring for the pass, bring cash for beer and pizza, and just swing for the fences.

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