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After watching the all-white roster for Let Freedom Hum: An Evening of Comedy With Martin Short at the Vic on Thursday, I was curious to see how the place would be transformed for the predominantly African-American lineup of David Alan Grier: Comedy You Can Believe In, featuring Ralph Harris, Marina Franklin, Mark Curry, Bruce Bruce, Aries Spears, and Filipino-American Jo Koy. Sure enough, down came the ballroom backdrop and up came a brick building/alley one–an urban setting reminiscent of early Def Comedy Jam stages. Hip-hop, predictably, was the preshow soundtrack. (The showcase will air as a TV special on TBS Sun 6/28 at 10 PM.)
Stand-up audiences in Chicago are typically segregated–mostly black at Jokes & Notes on the south side, mostly Latino and Asian for Mikey O productions at Joe’s on the north side or WATRA on the southwest side, and mostly white just about everywhere else–so it was great to see a truly diverse crowd at Grier’s show. I sat between a mixed Latino-Indian couple and a Filipina, who was sitting next to a white couple and a middle-aged black woman who cheered throughout the show with “That’s right”s and “Uh huh”s, like it was a Sunday sermon.
Jo Koy was decent, doing newer, undistilled material about his 6-year-old son–though I doubt TBS will keep much of it for broadcast. His boy likes to pull his penis “down past his thigh” in front of his parents and their friends, and even colors it green, drawing eyes on the . . . well, you get the drift. Koy then pleaded with men to “pull out,” explaining the consequences: “baby, no baby–broke, rich.”
