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Bradley’s comedy
well beyond Standup 101
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It was with a certain amount of skepticism that I stopped by Sharkey's Comedy Club to catch Brian Bradley last Thursday. It was the second night of his two-week engagement, and here he was, billed as "The King of Improv."
OK, show me!
I can appreciate a comic's well-constructed act without cracking a smile, and I never laugh or respond to hackneyed patter like "give yourselves a hand ... " just to be polite, but Bradley was so good and so unpredictably funny that he actually made me laugh. Loudly. Several times.
The crowd wasn't big, but he improvised a solid show out of what they gave him without ever losing control of the room to a couple of enthusiastic contributors seated near the stage.
What made Bradley's performance most impressive was that he didn't seem to have all that much to work with when he took the stage. Even comics who run on autopilot need response, and a comedian whose act is built on audience input needs active participation. Bradley was looking at a retired, if youthful-looking, Marine and his date. A group of sailors. A couple from the windward side and another from central Oahu. Assorted mainland tourists. A young couple from England.
JOKES ABOUT the military are Stand Up 101 stuff, but Bradley started with the servicemen and used what they told him about themselves and their experiences as the foundation of a much more sophisticated set that ricocheted off topics that included regional differences in the American South, a reference to Jackson Pollock, inane uses of the word "whatever," the benefits of keeping drugs in our schools, and the recent invasion of the House of Commons by someone protesting a ban on fox hunting in England.
And, of course, his initial impressions of Hawaii.
Perhaps it shouldn't be a surprise that a guy who took a break from the Comedy Warehouse at Disney World Florida to do two weeks in Waikiki would be something special.
Bradley delivered, and he did so while still respecting the club's restrictions on vocabulary and subject matter.
Not to take anything away from comics who make a living doing the same proven material night after night after night, but it soon became clear that Bradley wasn't doing a set routine, and that he wasn't simply filling in the blanks using a stock list of optional punch lines.
Bradley closed that night by having Sharkey's owner Bo Irvine help him with an improvised poem. An audience poll determined that Irvine was a Portuguese poet. Bradley provided a phrase-by-phrase "translation" of Irvine's gibberish.
The bit isn't new -- the original Society of Seven was doing something similar years ago, and it was probably old even then -- but Bradley's rapid "translation" smoothly incorporated many of the night's unique bits and characters in a cohesive and entertaining style.
Some of the lines even rhymed.
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