Kids Age Like Fine Whine
Courtesy of CANOE.com
Thursday, January 27, 2000
Reunited comedy troupe triumphs
By JIM SLOTEK
Toronto Sun
TORONTO -- It was one of the coldest nights of the year, and inside Massey Hall a prodigal comedy troupe was playing to the hottest hometown reception of their career. What would the return of the Kids In The Hall be without a little ironic contrast?
The show -- the first of a three-night stint -- was everything a screaming full-house could ask for, from the very first appearance of Scott Thompson and Bruce McCulloch as the secretaries Kathy and Cathy, followed by entrances of Mark McKinney, Kevin McDonald and finally Dave Foley in steno drag.
The Kids played all the "hits," from the satanic Simon & Hecubus, to the Chicken Lady, to the Crush Your Head guy, to The Cops, to Buddy Cole and McCulloch's annoying little kid, Gavin.
They did all this the last time they were in town, of course -- five years ago when they played a tour that brought them to Convocation Hall. But a lot has changed between that infamously listless performance and last night's triumph. The main thing being that every one of them was clearly having fun.
There were "Carol Burnett moments" a'plenty, interludes where they deliberately screwed up each other's timing and made each other laugh. In the "best friend couples" sketch -- wherein Thompson plays a guy who insists on testing the limits of a visiting couple's "coolness" by loosening his pants after a meal and sidling up to his best friend's wife (McDonald) -- Thompson ended up, um, pleasuring the "wife" in a performance that once would have elicited an appearance by the Metro Cops. Madonna nearly got arrested here for less.
At times, the energy utterly transformed old sketches. McCulloch and McKinney's Cops, for example, were so deadpan and soporific on TV they were almost frozen. Last night, they bounced around manically.
For fans of the familiar, there was even an appearance by that human sight-gag, adipose ex-Kids writer, Paul Bellini, in a towel.
But as much juice as they put into well-worn material (I never laughed as hard at the Salty Ham sketch), it was the new stuff that served notice that the older, wizened Kids are still in the game if they want to be.
Gay lounge lizard Buddy Cole held forth on Y2K ("Wasn't it a limp noodle?") and gave arch commentary on the Internet and the millennium, with not a single punchline I can print here.
But the best of the new stuff was definitely Jesus 2000 -- a brilliantly conceived Incredible Inventions-type infomercial in which McCulloch and McKinney sell an all-new Saviour with phony banter. "Just what was wrong with the old Jesus?" --
"Don't get me wrong, Jesus was fine, for his day ... Anyone can sin, but the Jesus 2000 forgives a lot faster!"
At the finale (sandwiched between two standing ovations), Foley looked around and observed, "I can't believe what a great job they did restoring the Rivoli."
It was a fitting segue to their closing sketch -- the deranged and sinister "Here's to Reg" bit, in which five friends remember a deceased friend, one of the first routines they ever performed back in their Rivoli days.
For anyone whose history with the Kids goes back to the beginning, it was a warm way to get sent back into the cold.
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