Second City

America: All Better! The Second City Mainstage. By ensemble. Dir. Matt Hovde.

Brother, Can You Spare Some Change? The Second City e.t.c. By ensemble. Dir. Bruce Pirrie.

AMERICA THE BEAUTIFUL The cast of America: All Better! dreams of a better, funnier tomorrow.

Photo: Michael Brosilow

Among the pressing questions of the age, perhaps none has excited more intense interest than: How will comedy survive in the era of No-Drama Obama? What with Gitmo, Katrina and Dick Cheney shooting that guy in the face, political comedy remains one of the few industries that’s flourishing at the end of the Republican regime.

Who could have imagined in 1999 that one day Saturday Night Live—the Saturday Night Live of Fred Armisen and Darrell Hammond, no less—might once again seem not only relevant but vital? Or that, as in the heyday of the Soviet Union, people might view comics like Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert as the only public figures allowed to speak the truth? One can almost feel the flop sweat radiating from the creators of Second City’s new Mainstage and e.t.c. Obama-themed shows, puzzling over how to keep comedy mattering after our own Prague Fall of November 4.

The short answer is, they can’t, exactly. It’s telling that the most charged political barbs of either show target local pols. Each show sticks a timely shiv into the back of our douchelord of a governor, targeting both his scandalous conduct and his voluminous coiffure. And standout sketches center upon Richie Daley’s Olympic dreams. E.t.c. closes its first act with a lovely little operetta, “Il Daley,” featuring a regally stodgy impersonation by a crowned Andy St. Clair. On the Mainstage, Michael Patrick O’Brien plays Daley as a glad-handing, Chicago-boosting buffoon not quite up to speed on who Pelé is and repeatedly announcing to an Olympic selection committee that the Sears Tower is the biggest building in the world.

BEAR MARKET Brother, Can You Spare Some Change? ensemble members sing an ode to Mayor Daley.

Photo: Bob Knuth

On the national level, though, neither show has much to offer politically. They deliver twin variations on the “joke” that Obama has generated unreasonable expectations, a trope previously brought to you by last year’s Mainstage revue Between Barack and a Hard Place and the Republican National Committee. Apparently, the other salient feature about Barry O. is his biraciality: Each show features an interracial-dating scene. E.t.c.’s portrait of a couple working through its differences with dueling stereotypes works better than Anthony LeBlanc’s Mainstage song, in part because it features the fiercely charismatic Christina Anthony and in part because it sidesteps the lynching jokes.

The fluid teamwork of the e.t.c. company, also featuring Amanda Blake Davis, Tom Flanigan and Laura Grey, keeps the group skating through a mixed bag of sketches. The funniest involves a disarmingly simple setup: Timothy Edward Mason plays a man at a supermarket checkout made nervous by an attractive woman (Anthony). In three minutes or so, he degenerates from awkward conversation (“I wanted to get an Essence magazine, too”) to unsettling babble (“Hey, everyone, let’s get naked”). He winds up issuing simian wails and grunts, his arm stuck down his pants and a look of abject terror on his face. The group also exploits its vocal talent: Mason sings a gleefully obscene song that demonstrates the secret of making drunk strangers laugh, while Anthony leads a nice audience-participation bit as a predatory lounge singer.

The Mainstage’s gifted performers include the acerbic Joe Canale; Shelly Gossman, who takes her gymnastic talents out to the room’s rail; and Brad Morris, whose coolly demented deadpan rivals that of Christopher Walken. The real revelation, though, is O’Brien, whose protean gift for nonsense carries an undertone of anarchic danger. In a sketch about death-row inmates learning movement therapy, O’Brien slips effortlessly into the outer reaches of the galaxy as he explains the way he thinks about women.

And he anchors the finest sketch in either show. To say much about it would give too much away, but for a few moments O’Brien and his fellow performers (also including Lauren Ash and Emily Wilson) find the point at which Chicago comedy and high avant-garde culture meet, in Del Close’s dream of obliterating the line between art and life. Even if the first act never really catches fire, America: All Better! demonstrates that comedy doesn’t need to follow the headlines to stay profoundly relevant.