City Hall Comedy: Have Envelope, Will Push

Imagine that you’re a member of a sketch comedy troupe, and one of your fellow performers drops out of the cast. Creative person that you are, drawing from life experiences to create stories, you want to dramatize this event and turn it into the subject for your next show.

But how do you approach this sensitive subject? Do you write a show bashing your former cast member, using this prime opportunity to indulge in some mean-spirited comedy? Do you ignore your initial instincts to write a show about this cast member and perform something else? Or do you turn the cast member’s departure into the subject of a 1930s-esque detective noir parody that suggests your sketch comedy troupe is part of a dark, evil conspiracy involved in massive cover-ups, arson, and even murder?

If you belong to the City Hall Comedy troupe in New York City, you go with choice “C.”

The City Hall Comedy troupe consists of performers Chris Booth, Julia Darden, Patrick Frankfort, Luis Nunez, and Josh Wolinsky. I’ve seen them perform on five different occasions, and almost all of their shows are based on a theme. Their Halloween show focused on “Horrors of the Real World” and featured, among other things, a sketch turning the “Summer Nights” song from Grease! to a song about date rape. (The most disturbing part of the sketch was how few lyrics they had to change.) They had a vaudeville show back in November that included a sketch about a manic-depressive ventriloquist and a dummy. Their show on March 29th and March 30th, however, was something I’ve never seen from them before – a full-length play called “City Hall: The Fifth Man,'” a detective noir parody about the sudden, untimely departure of a former cast member.

In “The Fifth Man,” Booth and Wolinsky play Detectives Kip Manscent and Leslie McGahee, two private investigators approached by “Julia” (Darden playing herself, sort of), who wants to find out what happened to their former cast member. The detectives interrogate club owner Gaylord Shady (Nunez) as Julia receives help from a homeless man and a newspaper seller named Dickspit (both played by Frankfort). In the midst of trying to find out what happened to Zak (the former cast member), Julia is torn between her need to solve the mystery and her desire to become the Fifth Man of City Hall, and the two detectives wrestle with problems of their own – McGahee yearning for his long-lost brother, and Manscent yearning for his missing keys.

Meanwhile, all members of the City Hall troupe play “themselves,” or at least characters who have their names and who are also members of City Hall. This double-casting and triple-casting leads to very quick costume changes – a scene with Booth as Manscent and Wolisnky as “Josh” is immediately followed by a scene with Booth as “Chris” and Wolinsky as McGahee. Later in the play, Gaylord Shady is revealed to be having a torrid love affair with “Luis” – and considering that both parts are played by Nunez, you can imagine the disturbing, comic effect of that mental image.

In-jokes and meta humor run rampant in this show as the City Hall characters make constant references to their own work. Dickspit refers to City Hall as “that rape joke comedy group,” and there’s another scene where another character calls City Hall “that comedy group that makes Nazi fart jokes.” (This description is shortly followed by a scene where “Chris” and “Josh” rehearse their “Heil Shitler” sketch.) Some of those jokes are probably only funny to the audience members who have seen City Hall’s previous shows.

But by and large, the comedy of “The Fifth Man” is hilarious and accessible for first-time audience members. Anyone who is the slightest bit familiar with detective stories or noir will love the running gags of cast members stepping into a spotlight to deliver a monologue, only to have something go wrong with the lighting as they’re trying to give a heartfelt speech. The noir-style dialogue is written with knowledge of the genre and delivered with impeccable timing. (My personal favorite was, “This red herring’s been cooked.” I belly-laughed for a full thirty seconds.) Or you might see an exchange like this:

DICKSPIT: Hey there, Dollface!
JULIA: Are you talking to me?
DICKSPIT: Do you see any other Dollface here?
WOLINSKY [as a street vendor selling faces of dolls]: Doll faces! Get your doll faces!

The cast, as usual, is on their game. Frankfort plays three characters, showing an irrepressible manic energy as the homeless man and as Dickspit the newspaper seller, but is mellow and a little sinister when he plays “Patrick” (based on himself). Nunez is equally funny as a shady (pun intended) club owner and as the slowly cracking, put-upon “Luis.” Booth is perfect as the world-weary, cynical detective who’s haunted by the loss of his keys and really believes that his missing keys are more important and tragic than McGahee’s missing brother. Wolinsky as McGahee plays off of Booth extremely well as the junior detective who’s not quite as cynical. (He also, at one point, gives the longest, funniest exasperated sigh I have ever heard.) And Darden holds the story together as the innocent, naive “Julia,” wide-eyed, hopeful, earnest, and the only sympathetic one in the bunch.

As a feminist, I’m particularly interested in Darden’s role in the group. In “The Fifth Man,” she fulfills the role of straight man and punching bag. Because she is a woman, but also because she has a very innocent-looking face, she is the member of the group that they all dismiss or make fun of. If this were South Park, she’d be the Butters. They don’t let her participate in the theme song (and physically shove her out of the way if she tries to introduce herself to the audience), they make fun of her smell, and they can’t even remember her name. (When Shady has to describe different members of the City Hall group, he says, among other things, “There’s Josh, the bearded Jew-boy, and the girl, named…Girl?”) The characters treat her as one of the guys, except when they make fun of her or exclude her for being a girl. This seems an intentional commentary on the “boys’ club” nature of sketch comedy – or if not, at least another way to illustrate the corrupt, sinister nature of the City Hall troupe as characterized in the show. I find it amusing, but I also hope that, in their next show, Darden gets to play a second character so she can be as evil as the boys. With her sweet face and high voice, the comic potential of casting her as a villain is too rich to ignore.

My favorite thing about City Hall is their willingness to take their comedy to truly dark places. Comedy that’s shocking for the sake of being shocking will bore me senseless. But they’ve thought long and hard (that’s what she said) about the psychology of comedy, and every moment is crafted as a way to explore the dark side of human nature – and some of what they find in this exploration would make even Trey Parker and Matt Stone blush.

I bring up Parker and Stone because the City Hall Comedy has a dark sense of humor reminiscent of South Park, minus the tiresome political rantings from the worse episodes. In fact, anyone who is attracted to the style of comedy from The Book of Mormon, but doesn’t want to trade a first born child or vital organ to get tickets, should consider making a trip to The Tank theater on 46th Street and paying 15 dollars, for a night of quality comedy and an open bar. Their next show is a sequel to “The Fifth Man,” and I can’t wait to see what happens next.