On Sunday, if you weren’t watching the Wimbledon finals, you were probably one of the thousands laughing yourself silly when improv comic, Wayne Brady of Whose Line Is It Anyway fame took to stage at an Andheri hotel.
Demonstrating his signature spontaneous comic routine, Brady, who confesses to have kissed all his fellow performers on the popular TV show, was seen performing a “one-man cabaret” as he carried on his amusing antics— singing, dancing, groping, teasing and entertaining his audience at the Black Dog Comedy Evenings at the Intercontinental Lalit.
Minutes before the show, the Emmy award winning actor, who is also a Grammy nominated singer tweeted “I’ve watched Slumdog Millionaire, Mississippi Masala, Outsourced, and Johnny Quest! Ready for India!.” Few hours later, he was seen gyrating to Bollywood music and even singing ‘Doom in the bathroom…’ to the tune of Prince’s ‘Purple rain…’.
Ask the 39-year old American what he didn’t expect from his debut Mumbai trip and he’s quick to say, “The humidity. If I had any hair, they would be all curled up by now.” Just for gags The show opened with Anuradha Menon aka Lola Kutty, who played emcee for the night. And while most of those from the city’s comedy circuit (Ashish Shakya, Rohan Joshi, Tanmay Bhat) were present at the do, it was Sorabh Pant from Pant on Fire who opened for Brady’s show.
Pant started with a self deprecating brand of humour (“Me opening for Brady is like Falguni Pathak opening for Pink Floyd”) moving on to his favourite subjects Gujjus, (“or for Gujjus, Pink Floyd opening for Falguni Pathak”) women and men. Thrice as funny Twenty minutes into the show, Brady came up with comedian Jonathan Magnum and background musician Cat Gray kick-starting a riot of laughter when he sang a rap song made up of words the audience threw at him, one of which even included “Pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis”.
Pant started with a self deprecating brand of humour (“Me opening for Brady is like Falguni Pathak opening for Pink Floyd”) moving on to his favourite subjects Gujjus, (“or for Gujjus, Pink Floyd opening for Falguni Pathak”) women and men. Thrice as funny Twenty minutes into the show, Brady came up with comedian Jonathan Magnum and background musician Cat Gray kick-starting a riot of laughter when he sang a rap song made up of words the audience threw at him, one of which even included “Pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis”.
Following the comic games routine, the trio put forth a show with all the ingredients of an improvised musical variety show— mimicry, using people as props, spoofing songs and even making up Irish drinking songs. And while the show was side-splitting to say the least, it didn’t feel much different from watching Brady on screen, considering most of the audience was sidelined to backcorners of the venue, with just a small screen as consolation. At Rs 2,500 that’s one thing you can complain about.