I’ve seen every mainstage show at Second City for 30 years. I can’t recall a cast ever lamenting from the stage how they don’t own their own material, a crucial aspect of the comedy emporium’s business model, let alone a cast throwing some edgy shade at the current private equity ownership — part of a “Sesame Street” spoof with puppets going after financial exploitation. But the don’t-mess-with-us crew in the 112th mainstage revue go there on one of their numerous anti-capitalist sketches.
That’s gutsy, and good on the bosses for not making them take it out. “The Devil is in the Detours” is a stylish show that, as ever, reveals much about where young improvisers are at these days. I tend to mark the changes in the world by these revues, invariably skilled and funny (with few exceptions over the years) but entirely different in aspiration.
Long gone is the world where it seemed like everyone (regardless of race or gender) wanted to be John Oliver or the “Weekend Update” anchor. This group is far more explicitly performative, expanding into their spaces and continually looking for heavily physical material (such as singing and dancing Starbucks baristas), rather than tightening their bodies as one often saw happen in the past. Speaking of spaces, longtime Second City-goers will be struck by the changes in the theater.
The famed high “rail,” in place for half a century or more, has been lowered and the result is a slightly larger and notable more un.