The Fifth Annual Milwaukee Comedy Festival opens tonight with a free sketch comedy show at the Alchemist Theatre featuring three of the best sketch groups in town.
The Comedy Fest kick-off starts at 7:30 pm tonight. Milwaukee-based sketch comedy groups Broadminded, The Show and The Gentleman’s Hour will perform tonight. That’s a really impressive line-uphere’s why:
All-woman comedy group Broadminded is cerebral comedy that also works on a superficial level, successfully managing a comedy feat few are capable of and doing so in style. Their recent show Science And Surplus featured a school board meeting between science religion and scientology in ancient Greece. Bizarrely hip stuff.
The Show
Consisting of Doug Jarecki, Karen Estrada, Jason Powell, Andréa Moser, and Matt Huebsch, this sketch comedy group is home to a couple of the busier theatrical comic types. Jarecki has been in quite a few shows over the course of the past season and Estrada has made memorable turns in shows like Stuck with In Tandem Theatre and The Smell of the Kill with In Tandem. Jason Powell’s offbeat sci-fi musical Invader? I Hardly Know Her! Was one of the more memorable bits of musical theatre to hit local stages in the past couple of years.
The unique humor of the Gentleman’s hour springs from the odd juxtaposition of a few different elementsPatrick Schmitzauthor of Rudolph the Pissed-Off Reindeer and First Stage improv instructor. Stand-up Tyler Kroll has also appeared onstage in theatrical comedy, most recently as the Red Dawn-obsessed older brother of the title character in the recent ‘80’s comedy 8-Bit Warrior. Mike Kauth has likely spent much of his time growing his beard and doing more constructive things since the last time Gentleman’s Hour graced the stage . . .
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The Milwaukee Comedy Fest’s Free Opening Night begins at 7:30pm tonight at the Alchemist Theatre.