Have you ever laughed so hard, you made a little weewee in your pants? If you were in attendance for the 141st annual Bob Comedy Revue, I know the answer. You have.
That’s because the Bob, Vic’s annual sketch comedy show and the longest-running of its kind in the entire country, was very funny. It was, perhaps, the funniest thing to have ever happened. In my 31 years as a comedy reviewer, I’ve never seen anything that was remotely as funny as the Bob. After my bitter divorce in 2014, I hadn’t laughed once. Not anymore; the Bob made me laugh. The chemistry: electric. The cast: electric. The jokes: you guessed it, electric.
This is the part of the review that comes after the nut graf, where I will give you a bit of history. According to research done by nobody in particular, the Bob is named after a 19th-Century janitor whose spirit haunts the basement of Old Vic. The show has been everything from a frosh roast to an open mic. Margaret Atwood was in the Bob. She even tweeted about it this year. There you go. That’s all you need to know. My ex-wife once told me that I obsess on little details in order to avoid confronting larger issues at hand—so how’s this, Sharon? On to the real highlight of the night: the show.
Literally every single sketch was funny. Here are some arbitrarily-chosen descriptions of sketches that occur at this point of a review Amazing. The sultry and seductive chemistry of Leora Nash and Leo Morgenstern’s “mole play?” Hilarious. Alex Leeming’s inquisitive, perceptive, and edgy take on what our future holds, using horoscope signs as a metonymy for these imagined possibilities? The definition of conviction. There is bravery, and then there is the Bob. These people used humour for its noblest aims, speaking truth to the powers that oppress. I only wish that they had dealt with the issue of unfair custody judges that penalize a grown man for discreetly renting an adult film, or twenty, but some topics are too difficult for university students to handle and, for that, I understand.
This year, the Bob was not directed by Greg Martin. It was directed by Blaire Golledge and Serena Chapin. Blaire also directed it last year, but The Strand forgot to put her name in the review and said that it was directed solely by Greg Martin. But this year, we will remember. Blaire and Serena directed the Bob.
Their Bob was about friendship and mystery. It was about the ties that bind us, the connections that cannot be spoken, and the things that tear us apart—avarice, hostility, and the pestilence of pride. Deftly handled by the caring humanity of the cast, the Bob picked us up and brought us to a plane beyond the immaterial world of laughter and good humour, where what matters cannot be destroyed but is always created. And in a year where everything went to shit—the death of life-changing figures, the election of a corny Hannah Barbera Nazi rip-off as leader of the free world, my devastating and newfound inability to trust Crossfit instructors—the Bob provided one glimmer of hope: the fact that laughter always sounds the same when we do it together.
Anthony Burton was one of the cast members of the Bob.
