fbpx

The Raging Jews of Comedy

Memo to the building maintenance staff at Beverly Hills High School: Pay the air conditioning bill.
[additional-authors]
September 23, 2014

Memo to the building maintenance staff at Beverly Hills High School: Pay the air conditioning bill. Please do this well in advance of filling the K.L. Peters Auditorium with a crowd, particularly when you plan to shoot footage of both performers and audience that may be used for an unspecified TV pilot. 

“The air conditioning is on,” announced a gentleman who had been instructed to get the audience laughing and applauding for cut-away footage before the headliners of the Raging Jews of Comedy took the stage on a recent evening. The line got a laugh, but it should have had the crowd in stitches, those of whom had not already sweltered their way into a coma, that is. 

This announcer was not the warm-up act for the Raging Jews of Comedy, a touring group of five comedians from around the country who took the stage at the Peters on Sept. 13. Some members of the quintet were more “raging” and comedic than others, but a nice-sized crowd appreciated the comics’ collective efforts. 

The group didn’t really need an opening act, since host/opener Sunda Croonquist filled that role. A half African-American, half Swede who married a Jew and converted, Croonquist riffed liberally on her multiple ethnic ties, but took her greatest pride in being from … wait for it … New Jersey. Croonquist has published a cookbook and, at show’s end, handed out tickets to the Laugh Factory where she has a regular gig. The woman was once sued by her own mother-in-law. Her success is not surprising given that she’s an outstanding mimic with an olio of spoofable ethnic quirks and stereotypes at her disposal.

Style-wise, the three men and one woman who followed Croonquist — each of whom performed a set of about 20 minutes — could not have been more different, both from the opener and from each other. They were New Yorkers, Floridians, award-winning veterans of radio, clubs and cruise ships. Several took aim at the stereotypical foibles of Jews (wealth jokes abounded), while others stuck with offbeat material regardless of how much blue hair happened to be in the crowd. With a few choice exceptions, the material was PG-13, with an occasional slide into raunch. Heckling also was minimal, probably in respect for some of the front-row patrons who seemed positively terrified of speaking up and becoming part of the act. 

Immediately following Croonquist was Bruce Smirnoff, a veteran of cruise ship engagements who happily gnawed the hand that writes his paychecks with a series of cracks at the populations who have jumped off Carnival Cruise ships. No relation to comedian Yakov Smirnoff, Bruce Smirnoff is a tall, gangly man in his mid-50s who employs visual aids in his comedy, including a photograph from his youth that shows him mustached and sporting an enormous afro. That photo paved the way for a line of hair-loss jokes and dating horror stories, often at his own expense. (“Chaz Bono as a man is sexier than I am.”) 

Channeling a little bit of Lenny Bruce, Jessica Kirson offered the evening’s edgiest and most rapid-fire set. Frizzy-haired and angry-looking, she interrupted her routines with ironic “I just love you guys” and quirky non-sequiturs, which probably had the front row very nervous. “I’ll get you,” she cautioned, matter-of-factly, “It just depends how hard I want to work.”

It might have been a slight miscalculation in scheduling wisdom to have the slower-paced and more cerebral Tommy Savitt later in the evening. Savitt, also quite talented, presents himself as a life coach or self-help guru in the Tony Robbins mode whose wisdom and advice are cracked, nonsensical or both. Sporting a fringed Western vest over a pink satin shirt, Savitt dispenses motivational bromides along the lines of “Dr. Phil says don’t drink while you’re pregnant. How are you supposed to get pregnant in the first place?” and “ The best way to fail is to try.”

By the time he took the stage, the evening’s closing act, “Savage” Steve Marshall, may have felt he needed to force the issue on his already pushy comedy to keep everyone focused. Marshall hit the stage as the evening was pushing 10 p.m., and the venue’s thermostat discomfort was ramped up. The comedian spent an undue amount of time tossing out ethnic jokes that he felt obligated either to justify or excuse (“Thank you for allowing yourself to laugh at that!”). 

A few patrons wandered in and out, but nobody seemed to depart in a rage. Except, perhaps, the performers themselves who are off to “rage” wherever the spirit takes them. 

Did you enjoy this article?
You'll love our roundtable.

Editor's Picks

Latest Articles

More news and opinions than at a
Shabbat dinner, right in your inbox.

More news and opinions than at a Shabbat dinner, right in your inbox.

More news and opinions than at a Shabbat dinner, right in your inbox.