O P I N I O N
NOT THAT PROFOUND
By Nathan Graziano
I remember reading T.S. Eliot’s poem “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” when I was in high school, and I remember being utterly bored and baffled by it1. However, there was a line and an image that resonated even with my 16-year-old pot-smoking, moronic self.
Toward the end of the poem, J. Alfred Prufrock—the neurotic narrator of the piece, paralyzed by his own anxieties and terrified by aging and mortality—acknowledges his fleshy dilemma, saying, “I grow old…I grow old…/I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.”
I can specifically recall never wanting to get old like Prufrock, rolling my damn pants.
Now, after attending “The High School Dropout” at the Laugh Attic at the Strange Brew Tavern on Friday night, I realize that I have “[grown] old.”
The concept behind the performance of “High School Dropout,” developed by comedian and co-host Mike Dupont, was incredibly innovative and original. Along with his partner-in-crime and co-host, local comic Danny Pee, the two would play the role of teachers while local stand-up comedians presented “book reports” on a variety of texts typically taught in high school curriculums.
After the book reports, the audience would have the opportunity to ask the comedians questions, testing the comics’ improvisational skills.
The show began auspiciously with a packed house and a young man named Owen Damon presenting on John Steinbeck’s well-worn classic, “Of Mice and Men.” Damon looked and sounded like your typical high school student and made some really amusing observations— slightly off-color, but it is stand-up comedy — about the text.
Then they lost me. After contemplating exactly why I lost interest, I’ve realized that it was probably more about me and my age and profession2 than the comedians themselves.
The modern zeitgeist when it comes to reviewing anything that the reviewer does not subjectively get or enjoy is to pan the material with snide and smart-ass commentary that the trolls at home can latch onto and haw at.
I’m not going to do that here.
For starters, getting up on a stage and trying to make an audience laugh requires a kind of stolid courage and grit that I personally don’t possess. By its very nature, humor is slippery and subjective. There is no possible way to write a joke that everyone in the audience is going to appreciate.
And unless a stand-up comic is going to play it safe and politically correct, they will invariably offend people in an audience simply by pushing the envelope of good taste and making people uncomfortable.
After all, that is their job.
And that was exactly what I observed for the five performers who I watched before leaving with my friends. It wasn’t that the jokes were bad, per se; it simply wasn’t my cup of tea. I tend to prefer comedy that is rich with irony and a little more cerebral.
The comedians I saw seemed to focus more on name-calling and locker room humor. Again, some people enjoy this—and much of the audience was engaged and laughing. However, some people in the audience—especially those of us with our trousers rolled—left after the first few performers.
As I said, I’m not going to pan individuals or correct any number of factually erroneous things they said on stage in order to get my English teacher jollies. The fact that I left before the show was finished precludes me from writing any such review.
In my role as a reporter and columnist for Manchester Ink Link, I’ve tried to make it a priority to cover and encourage local artists in all kinds of mediums. And I certainly appreciate Danny Pee for inviting me to attend “The High School Dropout.”
Again, the show wasn’t bad. It just wasn’t my thing. But I encourage everyone reading this to check out the many talented local comedians at The Laugh Attic open mics every Thursday night at The Strange Brew Tavern, and then decide for yourself.
- It now one of my all-time favorite poems. I was probably too young to appreciate it in high school. ↩︎
- I teach high school English. ↩︎
You can praise or pan Nathan Graziano to his face at ngrazio5@yahoo.com