Quoted
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PrettyWitty.com discusses sketch comedy with a quote from Moustache McFadden's Brian Steele.
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Review
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Moustache McFadden may not actually be saving the world with their brand of sketch comedy, but they sure are making it a funnier place to be. Their most recent effort, Moustache McFadden Saves the World, is finishing up its short run on October 4th at the Collective Unconscious Theater on the Lower East Side. Set on the last night before the Earth is destroyed, the guys decide the best thing is to go on with the show, an irreverent display of smart political incorrectness with a healthy dose of pop culture. Included is a hilarious sketch about a husband with an Asian fetish (but unfortunately for him, not an Asian wife), where their anniversary celebration quickly goes Far East. But McFadden doesn’t leave out our Communist neighbors to the South, either. In one of the most well-written sketches to come along in a while, innocent little Capitalist Sally finds a penpal in Fidel Castro. They bond over baseball and Saved by the Bell, and in a matter of a few letters, have understood the other’s way of thinking. Throughout Saves the World, McFadden shows its smartness in both writing and performance, economizing to make every line good and ending it just in time. The pitfall of most sketches is a tendency to drag, which McFadden manages to avoid every time.
The group, which has been performing together for over two years around New York City, is ready to go wide, hoping to take the show on the road to Washington, DC and Chicago. Its members, Holt Bailey, Jarrod Fry, Brian Shoaf and Brian Steele, are a talented and subtly funny group, managing to reign in their acting and let the quality writing of the sketch show through. “After gaining all this weight, (and it’s a lot!) I couldn’t really fit into the costumes necessary to do my Cher impersonation justice,” says Steele. “So I figured…sketch comedy!”
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Review
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Moustache McFadden
You and your three best friends have one hour to live before the sun explodes and the Earth is destroyed. Regardless, you carry onward and finish your live performance, while occasionally breaking into dance to Bon Jovi’s "It’s My Life" and soliciting advice from your favorite role model, Sammy Davis Jr. That, in a nutshell, is the premise behind the latest Moustache McFadden installment, Moustache McFadden Saves the World.
Their act bears a slight resemblance to Mr. Show–a series of skits, segues and musical interludes whereby the performers behind the characters let the audience in on their personal relationships and pending doom, which at times strains their friendships and ends with the audience voting whether or not to kill off a member.
If all of the above sounds too bizarre, don’t worry; Moustache McFadden bring enough energy to the stage to pull it off, quirky storyline notwithstanding. With more than two years together as a group, the four are serious actors but closet goofballs. Holt Bailey wears a "I’d rather be masturbating" t-shirt, Will Nunziata has an eye patch; Eric Zuckerman could win a Jack Black look-a-like contest; Brian Steele’s voicemail features a real-life Mr. T barking at callers to leave a message. (The two Chicago-natives met at a party.)
Sketches cover lots of ground, veering between pop culture and political satire: God and Ashton Kutcher hold a press conference and guess who gets all the questions; Fidel Castro and a little American girl become pen pals, writing about, of all things, Saved by the Bell; a man wishes his wife were Asian or at least more Asian; and Zuckerman utters what may be the show’s best line before being killed onstage: "It’s time for this virgin to go to that awkward school dance in the sky."
People’s Improv Theater, 154 W. 29th St. (betw. 7th & 6th Aves.), 212-563-7488, 7, $8.
–Lionel Beehner
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