Tole fares best when focusing on life’s intimate, cringe-worthy moments–most of which involve sexual embarrassment and end with a breathless, reference-heavy rant. But even then it feels diluted by his reliance on profanity.
It’s easy to envision the fest getting bigger and buzzier next year, since it so easily hit the mark in giving Denver the marquee comedy event it’s been missing.
The core of the fest is the dozens of live shows happening across the city, and the larger, more L.A.-saturated crowds were evident from the start.
Comedy festivals are for everyone, but comedy addicts are especially well-served because they get to gorge on the stuff until they pass out, post-Thanksgiving dinner style, in a pile of aching stomach muscles and alcoholic bliss.
Ferguson is a sharp writer and stand-up animal who’s only gotten more feral with the time he’s spent in his Late Late Show cage.
Beta Male is neither cliquish nor exclusionary. Nanjiani’s style is smart but also unusually welcoming, laced with self-conscious colloquialisms yet relatable in its observational goofiness.
Given his renown for a certain type of conceptual prank that has come to bear the unfortunate moniker of “anti-comedy,” it’s fair to ask if Kaufman would have wanted anything to do with this relatively straightforward sampler.
Posehn’s awkward, screen-filling presence and strangled histrionics are as much a part of his persona as his love of marijuana, comic books and death metal, but they’re increasingly becoming secondary to his reliance on gross-out jokes.
Like Lenny Bruce, Andy Kaufman and a handful of other sad, indisputably titanic comedians, we seem incapable of doing anything but poring over the whats and hows of their lives at the risk of ignoring the whys.
If Orvedahl is a smart guy living in a stupid person’s world, Cayton-Holland is the sensitive, learned dude surrounded by malfunctioning automatons and resigned to our eventual oblivion.
Even as Gass roots his act in celebrity impressions, he asserts himself as a pro with a specific point of view.
Editorial Director: Julie Seabaugh
Editorial Assistant: Daniel Berkowitz
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