You may have noticed the new awning on Newport, on the north side of the street. The formerly inauspicious door that belonged to Club Lower Links now has a more genteel framing.
Remember how going down the stairs at Lower Links was a life-threatening adventure, what with the darkness that engulfed both the stairway and the club itself? Well, you no longer have to risk your posterior as your eyes adjust. At Magoo’s Underground Lounge, exactly where Lower Links used to be, there’s light, on the stairs and in the club itself.
Inside, down the stairs, you won’t find Annie Sprinkle showing off body parts, or D. Travers Scott doing his riff on Jeffrey Dahmer, or Michael Zerang pushing the outer limits of sound and magic. What you will find instead — at least Thursdays in August — is Men of Leisure, a comedy duo that’s as much about the process of creating laughs as it about the laughs themselves.
“What’s being done now (in comedy) is being done so loudly, there’s such loss of subtlety,” says Jay Ferrari, who, with Jay Sukow, comprises Men of Leisure. “Just watch a sitcom: one-liner, one-liner, one-liner — there’s no dialogue, just strings of one-liners. The comedy shows all have these surreal premises, like ninja accountants — the premise itself dies fairly quickly. We try to go for something more tangible.”
Actually, it’s refreshing. When Ferrari and Sukow take an improv suggestion from the audience (the night we saw the show: tuckpointing), what comes out isn’t one clever line after another. It’s actually MORE clever than that. It’s a wry commentary on the vapidity of improv done in — what else? — improv. But it’s not just bad improv, it’s really good bad improv — the kind that shows all the tricks, reveals all the seams.
Both grads of Second City’s training school, Ferrari and Sukow don’t just work at improv, though. “The show is loosely scripted,” explains Ferrari. “The delineation between (Sukow and I) is that I’m a writer who likes to perform and he’s a performer who likes to write, so we capitalize on our separate strengths.”
They formally got together just about a year ago, after palling around in the same social group for about a year and a half. The first time they went up was at the Green Mill Sunday night poetry slam when Steven Sedon of Example: None was subbing for regular host Marc Smith.
“I’d been in a performance of Marc’s, so we’d had a lot of time to sit around and discuss our attitudes about comedy and performance over cups of coffee,” says Ferrari.
Nonetheless, it was certainly an audacity to debut at the Green Mill: He and Sukow improvised a silent routine.
“Everybody was doing poetry, words,” says Ferrari laughing, trying to explain the convoluted routine he and Sukow did (something about a glass of water). “You know, we had to be different.”
That, they accomplish. One of the most noticeable things about Men of Leisure is the duo’s complete lack of desperation. They take their time. If they don’t hit a punchline for three, four minutes, they don’t rush it. Sometimes it even seems they’re going slow on purpose.
“A lot of people see improv as sacred, but it’s seldom very funny,” says Ferrari. “When it’s good, it’s very good — but that’s rare. And it can also be excruciating. I think, with most improv groups, secretly in the back of their minds, each member’s thinking, `How can I be the funniest person? How can I have the quickest quip, the funniest line?’ The groups that do well are past that, they play to each other’s strengths. We think that a laugh is good, but we also love the `aaahhh’ reaction.”
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Actually, if Men of Leisure evolve the way they want, they plan to put themselves pretty much out of business — at least as far as the stage goes.
“The show’s called `Mitch Greene’s Jacket Stew’ and it’s a kind of vaudeville thing, my partner loves that era,” says Ferrari. “He wants to bring in other acts, sort of like a mini-Milly’s (Orchid Show, Brigid Murphy’s hugely popular variety show). Maybe we’ll phase ourselves out — I mean, I’ll always write his monologue, but there are other things to do, too.”
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The facts
Thursdays in August, 9 p.m.: Mitch Greene’s Jacket Stew, Magoo’s Underground Lounge, 952 W. Newport. Call 312-409-8581 (Men of Leisure).