Caught the Stella show at the Keswick in Glenside last night. They are greatly underappreciated, as the woeful attendance would attest – though the wisdom of an act whose main audience is college kids booking a show at 8 pm the Sunday after Thanksgiving is questionable.
Stella is hard to explain. Their material runs from the fairly mainstream and slapsticky (as in Michal Ian Black’s “Who Let The Dogs Out” ultimate party-jam / ultimate fuck song dance) to the outright absurd (as in David Wain’s new girlfriend, whose identity I will not spoil for those who are planning to see the show). In general the group is silly, but intellectually silly – think “The Three Amigos” if they were retarded New York yuppies instead of movie cowboys. They are absolutely the kind of act that your friends who worship Borat and Howard Stern will find baffling in a way that is terrifically satisfying for the rest of us.
Some of my favorite Stella bits involve making fun of the conventions of comedy. Last night, some of my favorite bits centered around the group, particularly Michael Showalter, not yet knowing the script for their show (the Kewsick was opening night of the tour) or getting heckled by audience members. I have never seen a comic respond with the kind of delight that Michael Ian Black did to being heckled. He seemed excited by the opportunity to improv, and some of the very best moments of the night came as he responded to shouts from the crowd.
All in all, a great show, though I feel a bit sorry for audiences who will see them in coming weeks as they get better at being off book. Watching Showalter struggling to remember his lines just made the show seem that much more intimate and enjoyable.
Notes: the Stella guys signed autographs after the show for a very loyal (read: near-psychotic) fanbase, and in the course of the show mentioned that there was still no date set for The State on DVD (David Wain said simply, “soon.”) Also, their opener was Eugene Merman, who was very funny in a slightly more conventional way (although his multimedia presentation was something I’d not seen before from a standup). However, slapping a 15-minute intermission between the opener’s twenty-minute set and the main attraction seemed very odd to me, and really counter to the whole purpose of having an opening act.
Also: Today I found Michael Ian Black’s blog, and intend to begin reading it regularly.
