The week before a momentous presidential election is a tough time to debut a sketch comedy show, but that’s the way the calendar fell for Best Kept Secret: Tell Everyone, the 48th Second City e.t.c. revue.
The timing led to some odd opening-night moments, for sure. With Hillary Clinton jokes and a sketch premised on a couple lying that they were part of the SEAL team that killed bin Laden, parts of the revue felt like a throwback to decades past. And, understandably given that the ensemble didn’t know how the election would play out, there were no Trump vs. Harris jokes to be found. (To see how picking the wrong electoral horse can comedically backfire, look no further than the pre-election episodes of SNL, which assumed a Kamala coronation was coming.)
The players also made the choice to steer clear of local politics, a safer target, especially with a mayor who can’t stop stepping on rakes and who boasts an approval rating in the low teens. Hard to tell why that low-hanging fruit went unpicked, but it was a missed opportunity.
One potentially winning choice in a fluid political moment would be to focus the revue on the timeless character studies Second City is known for. And indeed Best Kept Secret delivers on that score, especially in a second-act sketch where a father (the versatile Javid Iqbal) keeps coming into the bedroom of his son (Claudia Martinez, a barely contained force of nature) to ask him to turn down the music as he practices his DJ skills at full blast. Like the best sketches seen in Pipers Alley over the years, this one shatters expectations for how it will play out and gives the audience something funny, poignant and memorable to enjoy. Over time, this sketch could someday end up in a Second City best-of revue.
This revue is a slow build that kicks into high gear at the climax of the first act, a hilarious set piece involving multiple audience members, noisy misdirection and comedic sleight-of-hand. No more on that as you’ll need to come into it cold to fully appreciate it.
Another huge highlight: Tim Metzler’s maniacal ventriloquist’s dummy who’s having an unlikely affair with the ventriloquist’s wife and needs to conscript an audience member to cover for him. The subversive Metzler also gets big laughs as a spider watching his long-time human buddy (Terrence Carey) move out of their bachelor pad to get married.
Meanwhile, Meghan Babbe, who joins Martinez in returning from the most recent revue, Oh, The Places You’ll Glow, excels as a raunchy, over-the-top lounge singer of a certain age, and in a mini-monologue about the body horrors that ensue after giving birth. And Jenelle Cheyne delivers the night’s best sight gag, involving an unassuming piece of luggage.
Maybe now that the election’s over, the troupe can work some biting political satire into the slow opening act. (At the very least, audience members invited to submit secrets before the show for use throughout the performance could throw some political shade for the players to riff on.) Regardless, there are worse things than a revue that gets funnier and funnier as the evening goes on.
Best Kept Secret: Tell Everyone is now running on The Second City’s e.t.c. stage.
For a full roundup of reviews of this show, visit Theatre in Chicago.
Photo by Todd Rosenberg
