Routine Routines: Kids in the Hall

IN THE YOUTUBE ERA, when old comedy skits can be found for free in mere seconds, is a live performance by The Kids in the Hall worth a $40 ticket?

No.

With a working Internet connection, one may spend the better part of a day watching livlier incarnations of the group at home, gratis.

Nevertheless, there is something to be said for seeing one's heroes in the flesh and the Kids' enthusiastic fans at the Warner Theatre on Saturday likely screamed, applauded and laughed more than they would have if they'd stayed in since comedy is best experienced with others.

Still, that enthusiasm wasn't enough to push the Kids' routine playtime into an all-out chucklefest.

The Canadian Kids are a comedy troupe rightly revered for a 20-year off-and-on career that included a '89-'95 TV show on CBS and HBO, and their sketches are largely based on portraying prosaic lives of quiet mediocrity, horror and insanity.

The five members of KITH — Scott Thompson, Dave Foley, Kevin McDonald, Bruce McCulloch and Mark McKinney — have a knack for coming up with material that is often rude enough to send the prudish sputtering, but is mostly distinguished by being ever more surreal. The Kids' cracked universe is populated by aliens, losers, addicts, the slow, deviants and a few flustered norms.

Then, this universe is flushed out with a lot of cross-dressing.

From the first bit on Saturday ("Rape Kevin") to the performance's last pre-encore statement ("Take That, Mohammad!"), the show took aim at hot buttons, raw nerves and nearly every taboo imaginable.

One sketch consisted of a long monologue by a gay man arguing that Jesus was a homosexual. Another piece concerned a pair of Jehovah's Witnesses unable to get a word in edgewise while proselytizing to a "Rain Man"-like character. Another portrayed phone sex; another brought to life a very amiable Hitler; another made fun of Americans for being fat; another extolled the virtues of crystal meth; another satirized gay domestic bliss. (Key line: "You mean the attempted statutory rape of a retarded foreign exchange student was his way of showing he loved me?").

And on and on it went, for almost exactly 90 minutes.

While the Kids were as edgy as ever in their concert, their performances weren't as random, awkward or bizarre as they were during the group's years on HBO. It seems that 20 years on, the Kids in the Hall have grown less weird and more predictable.

On Saturday, the favorite characters — the horny Chicken Lady, the head-crusher, Buddy Cole, the Kathys — were all trotted out by the obliging troupe for an audience that rapturously applauded.

The Kids in the Hall said it best in the intro to their show — "our fans are looking to get their minds blown."

Sadly, few, if any, minds were blown at the Warner Theatre.

Written by Express contributor Tim Follos
Photo courtesy Kids in the Hall