What’s new in the funny business? Not for the weak, but for the week!
There’s a lot going on in comedy right now, so let’s get caught up. It’s so wild to me, realizing this week marks 15 years since I launched The Comic’s Comic as a standalone web site, to look around now and realize once again that nobody is really delivering consistent comedy news? Really?
Really.
To the news! Our top story:
Musical Comedy Theater Chairs
Speaking of taking a new look around the old haunts…I watched shows this weekend at both Asylum NYC and The PIT (and stopped in at Magnet Theater in between), and you know how you feel when you go back to your old school? I never took classes at any of these joints, but it felt just like that. Aside from spotting a few iconic teachers still hanging around, it all looks strangely familiar yet unfamiliar at the same time. Come spring 2023, the New York City comedy theater scene will look so weird to anyone who left it when the pandemic shuttered it all just three years earlier. Last things first, the basement venue beneath Gristedes soon will be no more. For better (or worse), this time. Asylum NYC, which came down from Boston’s Improv Asylum to repurpose the old Upright Citizens Brigade spot on West 26th Street in 2017, is getting kicked out along with everyone else in the building (Gristedes closed this summer) to make room for a 10-story condo complex. “It’s sad to see this space go,” said Alan Kliffer, Asylum NYC’s artistic director said. “To comedians, this place has been sacred. However, we are very excited about our new Flatiron endeavor.”
Asylum NYC announced to me on Wednesday they already have a new venue to move to — The PIT’s former two-theater spot on East 24th Street between Park and Lexington! Kliffer told me the final season of The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel filmed in the old-PIT-new-Asylum theater (!!!), and the Asylum folk plan some renovations before moving in, so expect a late winter or early spring re-opening.
The Second City plans to enter NYC next summer, over on 64 N. 9th St., in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. The venerable Chicago improv and sketch institution, which opened in 1959, inspired the UCB (which in turn spun off The PIT), also still has its Toronto location, and in the past spawned outposts in Detroit, Las Vegas and Hollywood. About a year into the pandemic, Second City was sold to a private equity group based in New York, which then hired Ed Wells, former global head of media and education for Sesame Workshop to head the company. “As we came out of the pandemic and saw the resurgence of our stages and our consumer demand and the fact that we’re selling out every night, it became more immediate for us to start thinking about expansion,” Wells said in October of the move into Brooklyn.
As for the UCB, which shuttered operations in 2020 — the UCB4 founders ceded ownership, with new owners taking over this spring: Longtime comedy/talent manager Jimmy Miller, former CEO of The Onion Mike McAvoy, and Elysian Park Ventures, a private investment firm. The NYC operations don’t seem like they’re coming back (several of the UCB-NY people regrouped as a nonprofit called Squirrel Comedy Theatre, performing shows on weekends at Under St. Marks), and the Sunset theater in LA is dunzo, but the Franklin theater reopened at the end of September, with a new training center down the road in Silver Lake. You might not see the UCB4 there, but a bunch of old faces have joined many new ones on the stage there.
So yeah, come spring, check this space and all of the other spaces to see who’s performing sketch, improv, stand-up and characters and where!
Speaking of New Faces, Just For Laughs finally uploaded the 2022 New Faces showcases from this July to their YouTube channel. Marcello Hernandez already has made the biggest leap since then, becoming a new featured player on Saturday Night Live (continuing the streak I pointed out last year). But now you can check them all out for yourselves!
NBC on Thursday announced the 60 acts who’ll compete in January on America’s Got Talent All Stars. Among them, eight comedy acts.
ANA MARIA MĂRGEAN (winner of Romania’s Got Talent 2021), ventriloquist
AXEL BLAKE (winner of Britain’s Got Talent 2022), comedian
JACKIE FABULOUS (AGT Season 14, 2019), comedian
JAMIE LEAHEY (Britain’s Got Talent 2022), ventriloquist
JOSH BLUE (AGT Season 16, 2021) , comedian
MIKE E WINFIELD (AGT Season 17, 2022), comedian
SETHWARD (AGT multiple seasons), novelty act
TERRY FATOR (winner of AGT Season 2 2007), ventriloquist
The series premieres Jan. 2, 2023, with Terry Crews hosting, Simon Cowell, Heidi Klum and Howie Mandel judging.
Rest In Peace to a couple of comedy legends
Gallagher died Nov. 11, 2022, in hospice care. He was 76. Smash a melon.
Budd Friedman, who set the standard for live stand-up comedy clubs and fueled the 1980s comedy boom by hosting the long-running cable TV showcase, An Evening At The Improv, died Nov. 12, 2022, of heart failure. He was 90. Clear the aisle.
New comedy specials streaming so far in November, and reviewed by me for Decider:
Chris Redd: Why Am I Like This?, HBO Max
Neal Brennan: Blocks, Netflix
Ian Lara: Romantic Comedy, HBO Max
Deon Cole: Charleen’s Boy, Netflix
Dave Chappelle hosted SNL and made some light fun of Kanye and Kyrie for their antisemitism, and would you believe it, “The Jews” were not having it.
A BUNCH OF NEW SPECIALS ANNOUNCED IN THE PIPELINE
Sean Patton: Number One, premieres Dec. 2, 2022, on Peacock, directed by Eric Abrams and EP’d by Michael Che.
Sebastian Maniscalco: Is It Me? premieres Dec. 6, 2022, on Netflix. His fourth special on the platform.
Atsuko Okatsuka: The Intruder, premieres Dec. 10, 2022, on HBO, directed by Tig Notaro. Okatsuka took this show to the Edinburgh Fringe before filming it in NYC this fall.
Netflix announced last week that Chris Rock will become the first artist to perform live on Netflix, set for sometime in early 2023. What if they time it for the Oscars? What if they don’t?
And HBO formally announced a forthcoming Marc Maron special, his first for Home Box Office. He’s filming two shows Dec. 8 at Town Hall in NYC.
GRAMMY NOMINATIONS ANNOUNCED ON TUESDAY, including Best Comedy Album. And the nominees are:
The Closer, Dave Chappelle
Comedy Monster, Jim Gaffigan
A Little Brains, A Little Talent, Randy Rainbow
Sorry, Louis CK
We All Scream, Patton Oswalt
No offense to Rainbow (who actually released a studio album), nor even to the other nominees, but it has become painfully obvious that Grammy voters don’t actually listen to any comedy albums. They simply scan for the most famous names and/or previous nominees and winners, and that’s that. So many quality comedy albums released between Oct. 1, 2021, and Sept. 30, 2022, and none of them stood a chance of getting Grammy recognition. We’ll have to do something for them before the Grammy Awards get handed out on Feb. 5, 2023.
Last, but not least worthy of your laughs and applause by any means, a hearty CONGRATULATIONS are in order for Natasha Rothwell!
Hulu announced a full series order (eight episodes) on Thursday for Rothwell’s How to Die Alone, co-showrunning and starring Rothwell as a “fat, Black neurotic who’s never been in love. After a comical brush with death, she refuses to settle for anything less than the life she wants, catapulting her on a journey to becoming ‘100% that bitch’ in real life by any means necessary.”
Congrats, Natasha!
See you next weekend with more comedy news, reviews and all the ha-ha-headlines fit for newsletter consumption.
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