Dreadful Penny

We saw them on Friday night at the Royal Oak Music Theatre and they were awesome.

I’ve been a KITH fan from way back; I used to watch their show on CBC while I was in college and later on HBO. I’m kooky for absurdist humor (Flight of the Conchords, anyone?), and growing up near the border I could relate to both the Canadian and American elements of their humor.

It’s no surprise that they sold out the theatre in another border area. We attended the early show (when it sold out, a late “adults only” show was added). I was concerned that they would round the edges off their jokes for the all-ages crowd, but that didn’t seem to be the case. You can watch the video that opened the show, Kids in the Hall Plan their Tour, and it set the tone.

I haven’t laughed that hard in a long time. There are lots of blogged reviews of other shows on the tour if you search Google, so I won’t give too much away. The Kids performed over an hour and a half of mostly new material; the only skit I recognized as coming straight from the TV show was an encounter between a couple of Jehovah’s Witnesses and Bruce McCulloch’s Gavin. Buddy Cole, Scott Thompson’s alter ego, threw in a local line about receiving a “steamy text from Mayor Kwame“. Dave Foley presented a time-traveling recurring character (and was mocked for his gig as host of a celebrity poker show). Kevin McDonald showed us his balls and coped admirably with a mic malfunction and Foley’s ad libs. And of course, Mark McKinney wrapped everything up with a head crusher appearance.

Some skits went on too long. Some weren’t all that funny — I can’t relate to the drinking and drug humor that seemed aimed at the college crowd — but the monologues were great and there was enough prime material that I’m still giggling when I remember it. Like I said, awesome.