More than likely, you’ve come across something written by Chelsea Peretti. As a writer, she’s written for publications like The Village Voice and Details and for TV shows like Parks And Recreation. Only recently has her acting and performing come into the limelight. Her special appearances on the TV show Louie or podcasts like the infamous Comedy Bang Bang‘s “Farts and Procreation” trilogy started showing Peretti as a new and great comedic voice. Now she can be seen on the Fox’s comedy Brooklyn Nine Nine.
The endearing sarcasm of Peretti transfers exceedingly well on stage. Her years spent honing her unique comedic voice served her well in last night’s stand up performance at the Grog Shop. Peretti expressed a childlike delight in coming to the Grog, as she was mostly just fascinated with the name and referred to the audience as “Grogsters.” She immediately addressed a Clevelander’s tweet sent to her requesting she doesn’t make fun of Cleveland like comedian Eugene Mirman did during his recent show in town. And, for the most part, she left our city alone.
Her set consisted of material ranging from having a multitude of racially diverse step-moms to trying to avoid the pitfalls of small talk. Her sly-natured humor, occasionally broken by her own great laugh, was, ultimately, hilarious. The crowd responded well but was slightly subdued, causing Peretti to comment on the weird vibe in the room. Oddly enough, one of the best jokes of the evening was a simple observation about old maps. “Wow, if I had known you were all really into cartography I would’ve led with that,” Peretti said. “Cartog at the Grog,” she tagged.
Opener Yassir Lester warmed the crowd up with his quick wit and fearlessness interacting with the audience. Though he’s a relatively new face on the comedy scene, Lester is killing it with audiences. His set addressed the issues of McDonald’s increasingly racially insensitive February ads and dealing with getting a penis drawn on your forehead (as he put it, “Gay Ash Wednesday”). His brilliant closer combined the worlds of rap and astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson in an interesting observation about rap culture.
This article appears in Apr 2-8, 2014.
She was great but they need to do a better job at silencing people that came there to chit chat all night.
Jeff, you are so right. Some of the idiots in the crowd actually thought she was asking them questions when she was setting up jokes.
They need to get someone in there to tell those people to leave
Maybe they’d never been to live stand-up before…and had only seen comics on the flat screen.
When they’re at home watching U-Verse, and the routine is just background noise, there’s nobody to tell these motor-mouths to STFU…and no need to do so.
Anybody who’s in their presence, and who also wants to hear the jokes, can just reach for the remote…and turn up the volume. Probably these stay-at-home airheads didn’t know that in Real Life, one cannot do that.
Does she look like Flo (Progressive Insurance chick) with longer hair? Or is it just me?
Chuckles the Clown