Fringe 2016 review: Sketch Republic’s Hot Raw Chicken

Ooh, being indoors for a show in the middle of summer with no air conditioning is all worth it when you’ve been looking forward to this year’s Fringe.

The sweltering indoor heat of the Mainline Theatre, combined with the hilarities that night really got me schvitzing throughout as aptly named Hot Raw Fire took over hosting duties, with Danny Belair playing the straight man to his three chicken clad co-hosts: a cellphone totin’ Hollywood chicken who’s been in every movie involving ‘fowl’ scenes, another one who’s freestylin’ it and can’t help runnin’ & tumblin’ as a free range chicken, and the last staying mostly in place as the more reasonable chicken of the coop.

Good thing their only costumes were the beaks. Any more than that in terms of plumage, and the mainline would’ve been their smoker.

All three of the acts that night were hot, their delivery was raw. Are they chicken? Hells naw, because ⅔ of them are relatively new on the sketch scene and performing in front of a Fringe crowd is most certainly not akin to having any chicken-like characteristics.

Small Town Mayor is made up of five peeps, three of which were already buds/coworkers when they met the other two through improv classes. Their offstage friendship, borne out of the desire to not take things seriously, was apparent as they presented lighthearted, fun little sketches with hints of absurdity, occasionally breaking down the imaginary walls of a scene to take it elsewhere for a moment. They’ve started making waves at monthly sketch night Party Dinosaur, so expect to see more from this goofy bunch.

Pickle Party is another newish sketch group. Made up of a trio of weirdo extraordinaires, Martha Graham, Emily Bilton and Nikki Fournier, this was their second appearance under Sketch Republic, and their first at the Montreal Fringe. They hit the stage running, with a dope-ass opening track that can’t stop/won’t stop, with Martha going into a hypnotic “so-you-think-you-can-dance” mode. High energy, intense characters shrug off every climate change indicator as a sign that it’s summer as their ongoing punchline, until ended by a short underwater scene where a bottom-feeding crustacean embraces these treasures discarded by the surface world. MESSAGE!

Studio beatmakers create what seems like a cacophony of mouth noises, but when Emily the high paid engineer puts on the ear cans to listen to the final mix, it’s musical gold. It brought me back to a time when my parents called my summa jams “jungle music”.

Being themselves and not characters is what made them so goddamn charming & genuinely funny. Make every party a pickle party.

Ladies & Gentlemen do what they do best. Recent winners of JFL’s best troupe award at Sketchfest last month, they presented new material while managing to still slip in some Bernie, Obama and other topical characters, as the two of them tried to outdo each other in an impression face off. Was their set well-crafted banter that they somehow pulled off nonchalantly, or was the repartee all ad-libbed? Hard to tell as they really love making their partner break character by their own clever retorts, and that’s part of the fun at a Ladies & Gentlemen event. No pun intended, this was a nice Warm UP to their upcoming Off-JFL show this July.

Hot Raw Chicken in itself usually spells instant summer salmonella, but for last night’s event, I’d chow down on this tartare de poulet. Overall, Sketch Republic is one of my favourite showcases to see troupes grasp on ideas that’ve been under our noses this whole time and make them hilla-fucking-larious. Real Fearless Motherfuckers.

For the complete Fringe schedule and tickets visit 2016.montrealfringe.ca.