Several months ago there was a comedy showcase at Pressure Cafe on a Saturday night. The bill had Jeff Hansen, Bradley Fojas and Prescott Tolk. Jeff had brought a contingent of his friends from whatever suburb he comes from and one of them started heckling Prescott. Prescott started a standard heckler rebuttal about this guy's mom and suddenly the room is doubling over in laughter. Prescott wants to know the joke so the kid says "My mom's in jail and she has cancer." The kid tells this story about how his dad ran out and left his mom taking care of three kids (including one who is disabled) and when her household falls apart because she is working three jobs she gets sent to jail for criminal neglect. Following this is a long silence.

Prescott says "You just totally ruined my closer. I had ten minutes all about how life is fair."

So naturally I was excited when I got the opportunity to go see "Everybody Kills," the new comedy showcase at the Gorilla Tango Theater from comedian/producer Jeff Hansen, especially when the aforementioned kid with the mom in prison was ushering me to my seat. It looked and felt as if Jeff was trying to run an honest to goodness comedy show, except his people are doing everything they can to ruin it. For example, the first act was this scientist guy trying to tell these jokes that were terrible, and when nobody would laugh he would start insulting the audience. Jeff gives the cue to bring up the music and when he approaches the scientist to shake his hand, the lab coat guy goes crazy and punches Jeff square in the mouth (and i was sitting 10 feet away, square in the mouth.) The stage erupts in chaos with seven people all suddenly struggling with the scientist (played by Ed Hansen), and Jeff introducing Bradley Fojas to do ten minutes of Fojas-a-riffic comedy.

So it is a comedy show, but it's also a soap opera/sitcom with all of Jeff's friends playing characters in this ongoing saga addressing such themes as love, anger, betrayal plus great performances by awesome Chicago comedians including Robert Buscemi and Tony Sam. There's only one more show this season and it is tonight, Wednesday, September 26 at the Gorilla Tango theater on Milwaukee in Chicago. The show starts at 9:30. I hear there's going to be a season two later this winter so be ready the next time this comes around.

-Tony Blanco