Two of the three weeks of Sketchingham! – Sketchfest’s kid sister to the north – are already over. This weekend is the last chance to catch this wunderkind of alternative stand-up, sketch, clowning, and wild experimentation, and it’s not too late to get your tickets here!
This year’s closing acts include Seattle stand-up Emmett Montgomery, Seattle/NYC avant-garde duet Becky And Noelle, and LA retro-garde duet Ten West.
SketchFest pal, musician and sometimes freelance reviewer Will Dean attended the first week of Sketchingham, and brings us this report from the City of Subdued Excitement:
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I drove to Bellingham recently to play in a concert band performance. I was planning to drive right back to Seattle after the concert; I’ve never spent more than a couple of hours in Bellingham. Usually I just stop long enough to grab some coffee at Tony’s in Fairhaven. But when I read the Stanger’s preview of Sketchingham, I decided to book an overnight stay. I wanted to know: Could Bellingham could put on a sketch comedy fest worthy of the 75-minute drive north?
The sold-out show began with David Cope, a comedian currently based in Seattle. Cope was very funny. His deadpan delivery alternated between sweet self deprecation and over-the-top braggadocio. At one point, Cope brought out a harp to accompany himself while he asked his audience silly questions. The harp made every line, every question, even funnier. Cope was great.
Bucket was up next. Charles Demers and Paul Bae hail from Vancouver BC and have played Sketchingham before. They had lots of energy. I laughed at their Combat Yoga routine, and Charles’ song about “the Happa I’m making with my Chinese wife” was charming, but the performance didn’t kill. Some fine moments to be sure, but not worth a drive all the way from Seattle.
Shenoah Allen and Mark Chavez – The Pajama Men – *were* worth the drive. The number of stories, characters, moods and subjects covered by these two guys in pajamas was flabbergasting. And Jesus were they were funny. Sometimes gently so, often uproariously so, occasionally profoundly so. Moments which stood out to me for their sheer originality included a chess match between a man and a bat, an awkward courtship between a teenage girl on the lam and a boy working at a haunted house’s restaurant, and a thumb wrestling match that contained an uncomfortable amount of opponent thumb licking/sucking. Wow, I kept thinking, these guys are from ALBUQUERQUE??? (They’re dually based in Albuquerque and Chicago.) In fact, I just emailed a college friend who lives in Albuquerque, telling her that she had better grab her gay best friend and go see these guys, pronto.
