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The Dark Side of Comedy Tour

At Yuk Yuk’s on Friday, April 7

Word is Duke Ellington once said that there are two kinds of music: good music and the other kind. The same holds true for comedy, no matter what labels you apply to it. As the Duke might have said, it don’t mean a thing if it ain’t got that zing.

But labels can be useful, if only to keep me at a safe enough distance from country-and-western music. In the case of Darren Frost and Terry Clement, two Toronto comics who stray far from the innocuous, it’s probably wise to give as much warning to a potential audience as possible.

On the other hand, a descriptor like The Dark Side of Comedy Tour can attract the wrong crowd: yahoos who think outrageous standup is an immediate invitation to become part of the act. Such was the case at last Friday’s early show. This rambunctious group of comedy widow-makers was trouble from the get-go, feeling the need not only to hoot but also to holler out any idle thought that came into their idle heads. Thankfully, emcee Jay Brown was able to rein them in a bit before the visitors appeared.

Clement was as unconventional as any comic I’ve seen anywhere. Opening with a jaunty Andy Kaufman-esque version of “When the Saints Go Marching In”, which turns into a satanic growl about cock-sucking, Clement had everyone sitting up and paying attention. He moved on to a puppet scene in which Randy “Macho Man” Savage has his way, if you know what I mean, with Hulk Hogan, and ended with a recorder solo, one badly played note at the end of a recorded jazzy number while bubbles filled the stage.

Then Frost came on, and the self-proclaimed angriest man in comedy was pissed. His thousand-yard stare and measured tone hinted that he was going to explode. And he did. When one guy up front thought he could compete with the pro on-stage, Frost let him know otherwise: “I’ll do the jokes, Fucky. You just laugh when the big people laugh.”

Although his act was filled with the type of language you’d expect from a dark and nasty show, his material was mostly rooted in the defence of the underdog. His hatred for TV’s Growing Up Gotti, for example, is on behalf of the victims of the Mafia. It would be like airing Hanging With the Husseins, he said. Frost also set the infamous and insipid Brad-and-Jennifer media splash of ’05 alongside the tragedy of Hurricane Katrina. Of course, he still threw in the odd bit of filth for filth’s sake just to gauge the audience: “My last girlfriend was half Greek and half Italian. I tried to fuck her in the ass, but it was covered in plastic.” When that elicited the expected groan, it just set him off. “Oh, that was too far? Okay, Fucky, here we go.” And we were off on a blaze of button-pushing jokes about Christopher Reeve and starving Ethiopians.

After taming the beastly crowd, Frost left spent. But not before wishing us all well: “Thank you, Vancouver. Go fuck yourselves.”