Time Out Chicago Review - click here to return to main REVIEW page

I'm often asked by Chicago's many sketch producers whether their handiwork should be listed and reviewed in TOC's Theater section instead of Comedy. What differentiates a sketch show from a play? they wonder. I've come up with a few arbitrary guidelines that seem to encapsulate the majority of Chicago sketch: If it's meant to be funny, has multiple, free standing vignettes and relies heavily on satire, then welcome to sketch town, my friend.

But maybe the most important distinguishing factors are merely the expectations inherent in the labels themselves. Plays generally have a narrative structure and at least a small amount of production polish; sketch does not, it's just supposed to make us laugh at some point. In that sense, most everything is fair game, and it's on this blank canvas that Flammable People's artful, unusual, painstakingly brilliant style has the capacity to rock our fragile little sketch world.

Mike Mathieu and Andrew Connor, a Bellingham, Washington, based sketch duo known as the Cody Rivers Show make a rare Chicago appearance this week; they last popped in during Sketchfest in January. Donning curly wigs and lime green jumpsuits, the pair paints a world that's just a little left of center in their new revue: A student's Elizabethan dialect is pissing her teacher off; talking about the Dow Jones substitutes for roommate bonding; a boy's retelling of his summer vacation involves the beach, hot-air balloons and dancing clowns.

But the heart of Cody Rivers lies in the group's ability to punctuate performances with compelling visualizations and physicality...Even apparent non sequiturs are testament to a commonly held, but rarely evoked, comedic tenet: Anything done onstage with conviction and commitment, no matter how weird, is engaging. And yes, Flammable People is also damn funny, it sports a sophisticated sense of humor that comes not from shock or parody, but from the hardest, most elusive thing to nail: truth, with a capital T.

As far as acting goes, Mathieu and Connor keep the work grounded, vulnerable and free of desperation, drawing on their chops to paint vivid emotional moments.

It's no surprise this bold, unique sketch-comedy group hails from a far corner of the Northwestern United States. Sadly, there's nothing even remotely like it in Chicago. Perhaps Second City's perch at the top of the local sketch ladder has stymied the creativity of local groups, who launch SC-style shows (blackouts between scenes; political material; at least one impression of a paparazzi starlet) in hopes of getting noticed by an SC producer. Perhaps our definition of sketch comedy needs to be expanded to include these risky, more theatrical shows. Or perhaps only a touring act from Bellingham, Washington, a city (population 70,000) with no sketch expectations that provides a removed vantage point for surveying the nation's comedy pulse, can do it so well.

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