REVIEW: Archer Live! @ the TLA 1/11

POSTED: Monday, January 14, 2013, 9:00 AM

Filed Under: Comedy

My phone sucks.

I’ve been to a lot of these “live version of a TV show” shows in recent years. They’re a mixed bag. Always Sunny was impressive at the Tower, with the stage version of the “Nightman” episode feeding off the energy of the crowd. Portlandia Live, meanwhile, was… depressing, relying on awkward, time-sucking crowdwork. I remember liking the Aqua Teen Hunger Force show at the Troc, but I also think the main action got outshone by a wonderfully bizarre intermission vocalist called Puddles the Clown.

So I know how these things tend to go:

1) It’s more of a talent show of unrelated bits than a cohesive production.

2) Ample video clips — “you guys are getting to see this a whole week before it airs!” — and audience participation segments are used as padding.

3) The relative fame and charm of the performers is expected to make up for any line-flubbing and inelegant transitioning.

4) It will cross your mind, at least once, for at least a minute, that you have been suckered. (Even if you got on press list.)

Nobody who left Archer Live on Friday night seemed to feel suckered.

Yes, the show was only about an hour long.

Yes, we’d been subjected to several (five? six?) t-shirt-gun breaks to the tune of “Danger Zone.”

And yes, crowdwork carried a fair amount of the burden.

Usually, that was a good thing, as Aisha Tyler and H. Jon Benjamin, seasoned stand-up comics, knew how to keep things moving while still acting like they didn’t give too much of a shit. They are generous, quick-witted performers. Chris Parnell, on the other hand, was largely silent throughout the evening (surprising, given his years on SNL). Lucky Yates and Amber Nash were very funny. Executive producer Matt Thompson was not funny at all, and he picked up on none of the clues from the boisterous crowd or his sighing stars that he was bombing.

Maybe “boisterous” isn’t a strong enough word. The evening felt like a drunk comic con panel. People were loud. There was some loud, good-natured booing here and there. There were some desperate cries to be heard by famous people. Funny parts were shouted over on occasion. References were made from the stage. References were yelled back to the stage. Texted questions were answered. The planned stuff worked, for the most part: The live script-reading, the acted-out bits, the video snippets. And I had a good time. I did. But I might be done with these kinds of shows.

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Featuring everything from event roundups to concert reviews and sex talk, City Paper's Critical Mass is a space for off-the-wall coverage of Philly's A&E scene.

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