Defining bad taste

What do a kid’s program about middle age, an excerpt from Pride and Prejudice and an adventure story about a swollen prostate, angry puppets and a singing lesbian cowgirl all have in common? The only thing I can think of is that all of them are featured in Define Naked, a sketch comedy act currently playing at the Shoe Box Theater.

The members of Define Naked began performing together 25 years ago, and this particular show was intended to function as a reunion—getting the whole gang back together. Unfortunately, it doesn’t work out that way. Peppered between the sketches are a series of taped phone messages from members of the troupe explaining why they won’t be coming. Everything from “trying really hard to forget that part of my life,” to “now that the Xanax is wearing off, it doesn’t really seem like such a good idea anymore,” to threats of “cutting” another member of the cast due to some alleged sexual foibles.

These messages are mildly amusing, occasionally upsetting and aimed primarily toward those familiar with the group’s history.

Of course, this could be said of nearly the entire show. The best way to describe it is as “conceptually funny,” the kind of things that sound funny when discussing them with your friends, but don’t actually work out on stage.

A prime example of this is a 15-minute sketch at the end of the show about a kids show focused on middle age. The sketch had story time, featuring an inflatable Prince Penis, his father King Prostate and the saga of the Kingdom of Urinary Trachtea, a sing-a-long about being a three-drink lesbian and a series of games and dances based around failing marriages and health. Sounds funny, right? Sadly, it wasn’t.

Other sketches included an interpretive dance about the birthing process, ordering a “nerd in a box,” and an interview with a stay-at-home mom by a crazed career woman.

All of them seemed to be written for an audience already familiar with the group’s history and material, as the only people who seemed to be laughing were those addressed by the cast by name during stage asides or seen mingling with them in the lobby afterwards. A minute-plus-long series of recorded fart noises caused a couple in the front row to walk out in annoyance.

The show’s funniest moments came in a parody of a parody, when they performed selected scenes from Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, substituting an Alien action figure riding atop a remote controlled dump truck for Mr. Darcy, which was hilarious. The cast’s use of English idioms and period language was spot on and evoked the most serious chuckles of the entire show. Especially from the line, “There’s a Scotsman coming from my stomach!” used when the alien burst through a character’s chest.

It’s possible that the show’s larger failure to launch has to do with the space’s lighting. It is a widely held truth that comedy works better in the dark, and the Shoe Box Theater is so small that to light the stage also means lighting the audience, thereby breaking the fourth wall and making it that much harder to suspend disbelief.

But to be blunt, it seemed very much like the troupe didn’t bother to update their material while on hiatus, relying on the momentum of their reputation and allowing them to choose being crass over being witty, which was very much en vogue during their heyday.

Define Naked is disappointing not because it tops out at awkward chuckles rather than belly laughs, but because of the amount of potential that it represented. They are a group with reputation and experience, enough contacts in the community to court top local talent to round out the production, a real theater space and some genuine talent in the acting department. Despite all of this, the show itself felt like a giant whiff, the Chinese
Democracy of local sketch comedy. Essentially, if you’re not on the guest list for knowing someone in the cast, you probably won’t have a good time.