"Barack" Rocks Chicago: Review of Second City's 94th Revue "Between Barack and a Hard Place"

An assassin has been hired by Hilary Clinton to off her biggest competition in the race for Democratic presidential nominee. Yet much to Hilary’s chagrin, her plan fails when the assassin falls hopelessly in love with Barack Obama. Hilary is furious, and asks the assassin how he could possibly love a man responsible for doing such terrible things as taking drugs in college. With a love-struck smile, the assassin responds, “Haven’t you ever loved a man so much you could ignore their faults?” This is just one of the countless scathing scenes from The Second City’s 94th Revue, entitled “Between Barack and a Hard Place.” The rollicking show, directed by Matt Hovde, opened to an enthusiastic sold-out crowd on Thursday, March 22 at The Second City Mainstage Theatre, 1616 North Wells Street.

Performing on a stage that launched the careers of renowned comedians like Bill Murray, Mike Myers, and Gilda Radner, the six actors in this revue have some formidably large shoes to fill. Amber Ruffin, Brian Gallivan, Ithamar Enriquez, Molly Erdman, Brad Morris, and Joe Canale are the show’s fresh-faced ensemble that partakes in a series of off-the-wall ketches and improvisations. Performing on a relatively bare, intimate stage, the ensemble utilizes every inch of their physicality and personality to create the various characters and locations in the show. This is a refreshing departure from the now-stale SNL, which spends most of its energy creating elaborate costumes and sets, while neglecting to make its humor resonate. The gags in “Between Barack and a Hard Place” are equal parts zany and relevant, allowing the audience to think through their laughter.

The sole running plot throughout the show involves various American citizens—white men, college kids, soccer moms—identifying each other as “Barack Obama,” poking fun at the senator’s allegedly universal appeal. Obama is later seen at a press conference, answering questions with the help of Abraham Lincoln’s ghost—further poking fun at the comparisons being made between the senator and the Civil War president. When a reporter asks Lincoln about his ambiguous sexuality, the president responds, “What I do with my Lincoln Log is my own business!” Yet Lincoln is speechless when faced with a real-life quote in which he indulges in racist remarks. This scene displays a surprisingly even-handed skewering of political figures, in which even the most celebrated president has his flaws exposed. Though no Republican candidates are included in the show, Hilary is played by Erdman as a humorless android who has to contort her face in order to elicit a forced laugh.

The majority of the show’s humor satirizes our country’s present divisiveness, by depicting altercations between the young and old, smokers and non-smokers, serious and sarcastic, gay and straight. One memorable sketch involves Morris as a self-important art connoisseur whose audio tour through an Art Institute-like museum is ruined by Canale, a philistine he rubbed the way. Another scene involves Erdman as a condescending youngster singing songs badly to a group of geriatrics at a nursing home. After the old folks complain about her endless rendition of “Kum Ba Yah,” Erdman cries that they should appreciate the fact she sings songs to them as they wait on death’s door. An old man played by Canale replies, “So open the door and push us through!” Another comic vignette finds an obnoxious nonsmoker questioning a pregnant Erdman about why she still smokes. Her sardonic response drew an equal number of gasps and guffaws: “I want to make my newborn baby tiny so it doesn’t hurt when I have it.”

Yet various other moments in the night were pure fun. Enriquez and Canale played an old-school jazz duo who built entire songs around words shouted from the audience. Enriquez also participated in another improvisatory sketch, where he and Gallivan did an interpretive dance set in a location requested by the audience—in this case, it was Subway. The ensemble even performed various songs with titles like, “I Am Socially Awkward,” “It’s Good To Be Black,” and “No One’s Afraid of an Irish Terrorist Anymore.” Ruffin played a terrorist in Chicago whose attempts to bomb the CTA failed because the bus lines were so unreliable. There was also a thinly veiled parody of the recent expulsion of Chief Illiniwek at U of I, as Gallivan replaces his school’s “Screaming Drunken Navaho” mascot with a team name guaranteed to offend no one: The Clouds. “You’ll rain terror and accumulus victory!” smarmily exclaimed Gallivan. All the while, there wasn’t an audience member in the small, legendary theatre who didn’t have a smile of amused elation on their face.

Tickets for The Second City’s 94th Revue “Between Barack and a Hard Place” are available by phone at (312) 337-3992, and online at www.secondcity.com. Cost is $19 for the shows running Tuesday through Thursday at 8pm, and $24 for the Friday and Saturday shows at 8pm and 11pm. Tickets for the 7pm Sunday show cost $19.