From VH1's bestweekever.tv:
UNSOLICITED ENDORSMENT: If You’re In New York City, See The Cody Rivers Show This Week

The Cody Rivers Show, a two-person performance group from the Seattle area, is - skipping past all the obligatory qualifying and prefacing that must accompany these sorts of grandiose announcements - the most amazing sketch group I have ever seen.

They're a two-person group from outside the Seattle area who happens to be at the UCB Theater in New York Monday and Wednesday of this week, and, while I cannot hope to explain what they do or specifiy my gushing praises, I simply must straight up say that if you only listen to one recommendation that I ever make in the lifespan of this blog, for serious, go see the Cody Rivers Show if they come to where you live.

This isn’t a slight to the hundred other sketch groups I’ve watched (and performed in); there are tons of awesome groups out there who put on fantastic, hilarious shows, but Cody Rivers transcends standard sketch comedy without the alt-comedy self-consciousness that usually accompanies anything that supposes to "transcend" a form of comedy. The bits are just impeccably rehearsed and as physically impressive as they are funny, they’re engaging, they're beyond creative, and they really are something you’ve never seen before without constantly reminding you that it’s something you’ve never seen before.

Alright, never mind, I said I wasn’t gonna try to explain it, and I already f*cked up. Just see the show. Seriously."

From The Orlando Sentinel:
The Cody Rivers Show Presents: Stick to Glue
by Elizabeth Maupin, Orlando Sentinel

If there were an award for excellence for fast talkers, the two high-octane guys who make up The Cody Rivers Show would have it almost all to themselves. In fact, Andrew Connor and Mike Mathieu, two Ohioans who now perform as the Cody Rivers Show out of Bellingham, Wash., deserve some kind of category all their own - best physical comedy, maybe, or best comic duo who talk in tiny little voices while running in slow motion, or best troupe to play three characters when there are only two of them onstage.

You could call Cody Rivers sketch comedy, but it’s nothing like the sketch comedy you see on TV. Sporting big question marks and exclamation marks on their faces, strange shoes and brightly colored pants, Mathieu and Connor rely as much on physicality than they do on words. But the words are hilarious - the lecturers who repeat themselves ad infinitum, the list of the 27 different types of people (people who resent horses being chief among them).

No more jokes given away here, but look for the human finger puppets and the face-to-face theater (and if you don’t like audience participation, skip the first couple of rows). This is bravura theater, no matter which category you choose.

The Charleston City Paper
Rating: A+

Halfway through the Cody Rivers Show, Andrew Connor thanks his brain for its capacity to remember.
“Dear Brain,” he scribbles on an imagined pad. “Thanks for the memories.”

If gratitude keeps a good thing going, the Cody Rivers Show has legs of steel. The applause that erupted from the audience at Theater 99 will surely refuel this speed-loving duo as they continue their act at this year’s Piccolo Festival.

Imagine free-falling through an atmosphere of people, places, and situations while laughing gas pumps in your veins. This summarizes The Cody River Show’s uncanny ability to recite vast amounts of seemingly irrelevant information and link it into a montage of hilarious stories. It showers the audience with spasmodic vignettes that combine dance, song, and dialogue. It flaps like a pair of frenzied wings, spilling anecdotes and interchangeable characters over the crowd.

The performance exudes enough energy to warrant inspection of the nearest Red Bull distributor, and performers Mike Mathieu and Andrew Connor are spot on with their multi-faceted interactions. They stamp and weave with the gracefulness of dancers, they exchange offhand comments like best friends, and they seamlessly shift into fresh vignettes as the previous story settles in. Indeed, The Cody Rivers Show demands high octane from its audience, but the effort is unnoticed as you laugh and guffaw until your jaw hurts.

Appearing on stage as slow-motion characters with low, pinched voices, the duo allows a moment to pass before they unleash their comedic fury. They are nimble trespassers in a world inhabited by strange, recognizable characters, yet they create this world and rule it like kings who enjoy intelligent humor and practical jokes.
If anything evokes the act’s narrative, it is a series of ellipses — think Celine in a good, theatrical mood: characters and dialogue alternate with the slap of a hand on a knee, and then it’s off to another scenario.

In one scene two bumbling doctors describe the fate of the planet. They mindlessly repeat themselves, saying, “It’s bleak,” and “If you bemoan our generation,” until the spin grows laughable, and the audience realizes the gag. Another spans continents. The duo morphs from place to place and features a variety of characters, all of which turn out to be interconnected. The storyline is too complicated and disjointed to explain, but to their credit, The Cody Rivers Show brings it together flawlessly.

Later, a spawned duo appears to track the movements of the two performers. But the spawn speak another language, a comb-over of sentences that flips words and readjusts their meanings. There are revisited adages that carry new weight.

“If at first you don’t secede, then you’re not South Carolina.” Or, “If you can’t stand the heat, stand next to the freezer.”

A magician makes silence disappear; a character reveals he is able to turn into a car, but only when he isn’t riding his bicycle; the duo performs face-to-face theater, a playful way to involve the audience without making everyone grow stiff, and then goes on to hide behind the stage, performing for no one, an experience they deem intense.

That intensity lasts throughout the show. When you stand to leave you feel like you’ve been through a final exam, but instead of hand cramps your jaw aches and your brain buzzes with good cheer.

The Cody River Show jokingly describes one of their vignettes as the new generation of theater. If that’s true we need to extend thanks to their brains, and for the memories.

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