Friday, November 27 marked the opening night of the 143rd production of The Bob at the Isabel Bader Theatre, which runs out of Victoria College and is one of Canada’s longest-running comedy sketches. Some of the University of Toronto’s most famous alumni, including Margaret Atwood and Lester B. Pearson, have performed in the student production. This year’s event was tantalizingly titled “The Bob: With David Schwimmer?” Although Schwimmer, sadly, did not appear, the theme song of “Friends” made a prominent appearance, acting as both the opening and closing song and eliciting an impassioned round of clapping and singing along from the audience.
Comedy is perhaps both the most subjective and the most objective of all theatrical forms. In any given comedic performance, there will be jokes that are almost universal in their appeal, and others which are exceedingly funny for some and terribly dull for others. For a reviewer, the presence of comedy and the absence of a target of the humour, as in satire, makes for a very difficult job, because “effectiveness” or “quality” is so hard to judge. The Bob’s 143rd show largely steered clear of satire. Conversely, many of its jokes depended on either a knowledge of certain elements of pop culture or an appreciation for a particular brand of silliness. The result was a night that was truly enjoyable at times andcringe-worthy at others. Of course, even the lowest moments were better than writing the essay the reviewer was procrastinating on, so perhaps “The Bob” should be commended for truly understanding its audience: students.
This year’s production had both a running narrative and independent sketches. For the former, the audience followed a meta-theatrical narrative that had one of the cast members “running late” for the show and decided that the only solution was time-travel. Throughout the night, the actress would “arrive” at various locations spread across multiple time periods, including Nazi Germany, a post-apocalyptic earth, Shakespeare’s England, and “The Bob” itself in 2012. This gave the show a wonderful chance to unashamedly play on stereotypes—such as in “Evil German”—or make fun of the student populace with reminders of the obsession with “Kony 2012,” “Gangnam Style”, and the Mayan prediction of end-of-the-world. Some of the best sketches were the ones that were part of this narrative; even some of the less bombastic jokes were made more amusing because of their setting in the space-time continuum.
The independent sketches varied in their humorous potential. There were stars like the Bob Intro Video, which featured a sack of potatoes as director Greg Martin; “In-Flight Safety,” a sketch that exaggerated flight attendants safety mimes; and “Phantom of the Basement,” which balanced humour with a cute and oddly touching story of an energetic boy resenting his new sibling. There were strange sketches, like “Yummy Yummy Yoghurt,” featuring a teenager who had never learned how to use a spoon, or “Cacti need Hugs Too,” which had a great deal of ear-splitting screaming and an unintelligible ending. There were dull ones, like “When You Just Really Want Some Lasagna,” which had a rather half-hearted resolution. Then there were the sketches that were either loved or hated, like “Stairlift,” which elicited laughs from some audience members and groans from others.
An honourable mention must go to the program, which featured imaginative director and cast bios. Here, Greg Martin thanks the U of T instructors for “slowly grinding the life out of every student that passes through your vaunted doors” and Steven Lyons takes an entire page to call out his friend for not letting Lyons cheat at Scrabble, a truly shameful act; meanwhile, Emma Armitage is noted as “trying to live a life Harry Styles would be proud of despite the fact that her life has no direction.” Clearly, the cast and crew are dedicated not just to “The Bob”, but also making life funnier in general.
