Atomic Vaudeville’s 10th Anniversary Show
Where: Victoria Event Centre, 1415 Broad St.
When: Tonight, Friday, Saturday (doors 7:30 p.m., show 8 p.m.)
Tickets: $15 to $35(ticketrocket.org)
At a second-storey loft in Chinatown, a gaggle of 20-somethings rehearsed a Bollywood-inspired routine. Dressed in jeans, yoga pants and sweat-shirts, the dancers swung their hips and executed stylized arm movements.
“Great! Good. Can we look at the ladies’ part again?” said Britt Small, co-founder of Atomic Vaudeville. A bearded assistant added: “Women are scurrying. The guys are doing Super Mario.”
A ceiling fan decorated with silver streamers spun like a firework. At one end of the loft, a blackboard offered short-hand on Atomic Vaudeville’s upcoming 10th anniversary show: “Dicks/sportswear… Penis/mind-puppet… Rites of passage/hazing… homo-erotic/cross-dressing.”
Small, Atomic Vaudeville’s artistic producer, co-founded the company a decade ago with Jacob Richmond, an actor and playwright (Ride the Cyclone, Legoland). Over that time, Atomic Vaudeville built a dedicated following of 100 (average age 30) who flock to its outrageous comedy shows at the Victoria Event Centre, a funky Broad Street club.
Past routines simulated beer douches and reimagined Saddam Hussein as a stand-up comic; song topics included serial killer John Wayne Gacy and sodomy. For the upcoming show, Britt will sing in a duo called Slut Revolver. There’ll be encore presentations of favourite sketches such as Samuel the Christian Ninja (“He’ll say, ‘enough of the pedestrian satire, let’s fight!’” said Small), Jillymule (a satire of the Jackass TV series) and Bollywood Batman.
Because the 10th anniversary show has a “look-back” theme, it’s quite possible the infamous Where’s My Monocle? skit will be reprised. A satire of bad British TV, Where’s My Monocle? has a crew of dull-witted English-accented types repeatedly asking: “Where’s my monocle?” The location of the monocle cannot be revealed without ruining the surprise — suffice it to sayit’s not comedy for the faint-of-heart.
In Atomic Vaudeville’s souvenir program, cast members offer favourite memories. Male nudity is a recurring theme. Richmond admits anatomical displays were a regular laugh-getter in the early years of Atomic Vaudeville, although that trend has ebbed.
“It got boring after a while,” he said. “It was just to balance the scales. We would only exploit men sexually.”
When Richmond first arrived in Victoria, he encouraged Small to join him in staging the sort of cabaret nights he’d done in Montreal’s theatre community. These evenings of low-budget comedy were performed in apartments or in community halls.
Atomic Vaudeville started as a monthly sketch community troupe. It soon evolved into something Small and Richmond insist is unique. Each show, created around a theme, is wrapped around a specific story-line, as opposed to being a grab-bag of Saturday Night Live style sketches. Small says the variety of what’s offered — large-cast dances, off-beat comedy and “anti-comedy” (bits that are absurd or deliberately unfunny with ironic intent) — also makes Atomic Vaudeville’s two-hour-plus shows a one-of-a-kind experience.
With Atomic Vaudeville, the audience knows to expect no-holds-barred comedy. That said, the odd skit does offend. Small says one performer raised eyebrows when he drew back his robe to reveal a hideous, anatomically-correct “naked suit”.
“He modelled it after his step-mother, actually,” Small said. “There were a few people who found it disturbing. Some people loved it.”
Richmond recalls writer Alex Wlaskenko offended when he switched from a Scott Baio impression to a rant critical of white liberals who provide ineffectual lip-service critical of Rwandan genocide.
“I was really uncomfortable,” he said, “and at the same time, really excited during that.”
Both Richmond and Small say being provocative is part of their company’s mandate. In recent years, Atomic Vaudeville has interspersed its comedy with more serious offerings. Some are written and performed by long-time member Andrew Bailey, who hosts the upcoming show.
Bailey’s recurring character in Atomic Vaudeville has been Death. “I love playing Death,” he said. “That’s the character most unlike me, where I’m allowed to be an a--hole.”
His provocative monologue, Why Rape is Sincerely Hilarious, recently went viral, notching more than 600,000 views on YouTube over the past five weeks. While it contains comic elements, the piece — written and performed by Bailey — is a serious commentary on sexual abuse.
Bailey said without his years of experience performing and writing for the company, he wouldn’t have been able to create it.
Other members of Atomic Vaudeville have found success beyond the company, including Mike Delamont and Katie-Ellen Humphries, both stand-up comics.
The alter ego of Atomic Vaudeville is its production of full-length shows, such a Richmond’s musical Ride the Cyclone and his play Legoland. The company is contemplating another original show, inspired by the music of Victoria’s Anne Schaefer.
It also plans to produce Richmond’s new show, The Tragical Comedy of Punch and Judy, to be premièred this summer by Caravan Farm Theatre.
As for Atomic Vaudeville’s regular comedy nights, the company’s founders say popular demand compels them to continue.
“I don’t think we could even shut it down if we wanted to at this point,” Richmond said.
