“Live From Chicago showcases Buress at an interesting moment, pushing through the beautifully awkward transition from cult favorite to mainstream success story.” — Eric Bricker
Hannibal Buress: Live from Chicago
Available through comedycentral.com
Saturday Night Live and 30 Rock veteran (and current Broad City MVP) Hannibal Buress is an incredible joke writer with one of the most distinctive voices in stand-up. Unfortunately, for much of Live From Chicago, the two don’t always go hand in hand.
Where Buress’ last special, Animal Furnace, found the comedian pitching across the plate, controlling the room without breaking his slow deadpan cadence, Live From Chicago finds him a little breathless, speeding through some punch lines and backing away from others. His timing is ever so slightly off.
When Buress does settle into his trademark rhythm, however, Live From Chicago is a delight. It’s the equivalent of spending a comfortable evening sharing drinks and trading stories with an eccentric friend; Buress runs the gamut on topics, musing in surprising depth on everything from hypothetically hunting and eating penguins (“You telling me you wouldn’t pay good money to put a 20-point combo on a penguin?”) to the silliness of hardcore rappers on Molly (“I just masturbated to the color blue!”).
Live From Chicago showcases Buress at an interesting moment, pushing through the beautifully awkward transition from cult favorite to mainstream success story. As a result, Live From Chicago is ultimately a mixed bag, a likable, shaggy collection of duds and shining moments that highlight Buress’ enormous growth while still leaving room for him to truly explode.
Todd Barry: The Crowd Work Tour
Available at louisck.net
The Crowd Work Tour is not like most other stand-up specials: For one thing, the comedian at its center, Todd Barry, went on the road without any sort of prepared material, instead relying entirely on audience interviews and improvised banter to fill his sets.
For another, Crowd Work truly emphasizes the work; whereas most comedians’ hours are spent in a huge, well-lit theater, Barry films guerrilla-style in the sort of converted punk clubs and out-of-the-way, wood-paneled dive bars that are a club comic’s real stomping grounds.
These diverse, slightly outre venues lend a sort of anarchic cheeriness to Barry’s handful of crowd work sets, which, save for a verbal sparring match with a passionately drunk woman in Portland, Ore., never truly spiral into insanity.
Instead, Barry goes into each audience interaction with laser-like focus. Rather than using his audience as launching pads for stories or musings of his own, he keeps the attention rigidly, almost frustratingly, on the people in the crowd, letting them talk their way out of their comfort zones and into comedy gold without ever dropping his wry, quietly judgmental persona.
From an old member of a hardcore band to a bearded hipster who sells cucumber soda, Barry pulls strings and creates relationships seemingly without effort, turning the awkward into the sublime with a grin and a casual shift of a mic stand. Quick, gritty and consistently surprising, The Crowd Work Tour is a welcome experiment from a hardened comedy veteran.
Patton Oswalt: Comedy Plus Tragedy Equals Time
Available through comedycentral.com
Comedy Plus Tragedy Equals Time begins and ends with a standing ovation, and it’s not hard to see why: Patton Oswalt, unlikely star and Twitter demigod, is a master craftsman, and Comedy Plus Tragedy finds him playing at the peak of his prodigious powers
But this special, his fourth, finds a slightly different Oswalt: His jokes are somehow more mature, more personal and he spends much of the show’s runtime talking about his daughter, his health and his early experiences in stand-up.
As a whole, Comedy Plus Tragedy is largely rooted in this intimate brand of storytelling. Oswalt primarily uses his profound gift for lacerating observation on the absurdities of adult life, rather than his old pet themes of politics and pop culture. The special is at its best when he finds a balance between the two; in one incredible bit watching several kids play in the park turns into a reverie on training for the apocalypse, while later, a trip through a rose garden turns into a rundown on 18th-century courtship rituals.
Loose yet incredibly assured, Comedy Plus Tragedy serves as a fine introduction to Oswalt’s stand-up and a welcome victory lap from one of comedy’s absolute biggest and brightest names.
