She the People Sets the Bar High at Second City

If simmering crowd energy tells you anything about how good a show is going to be, She the People:  Girlfriends’ Guide to Sisters Doing It for Themselves on a return run at Second City, promised to be a lot more than a little bit fun. The pre-show soundtrack was jumping and you could almost smell the latent anticipation in the air.   The house was ready.

Garnering plenty of attention and praise during previous runs last year, the performance is now scheduled to play through April 1^st  which means even more people will get the chance to fall in love with six wonderfully talented women controlling the night.

What do you expect when you go to an all-female comedy show?  Especially given the perennial culture wars raging from coast to coast?  In the case of She the People, simply expect a text book lesson on how to slay.

Headed by Carly Heffernan, the writing team that includes some of the performers was big.  What they wrought was a tsunami of bone crushing comedic wit. Even though the style and delivery couldn’t be more different, the production still had the feel of a Dave Chappelle show because it wasn’t just funny, it was stupid smart. You need high intelligence to pull of exceptional comedy and that’s exactly what this show has and does.

It’s bullet train speed had the audience panting trying to keep up. Each sketch went up, killed, and instantly rolled into another equally audacious and brilliant skit.  Was the writing just so wonderfully good or did the performers propel the show into awesomedom?  It’s a completely immaterial chicken or egg question.  This show couldn’t stand without both being remarkable.

And yes,  it’s comedy so nothing’s really sacred. The six women on stage had no problem satirizing “girlness” as well as slipping guys on the skewer.  The opening sketch about a woman looking for some love from her girls after she thought her boyfriend dumped her let you know what you were in for.  Friendship means sometimes you lie and sometimes you go point blank with the truth.  These ladies showed how funny it can be to do both.  Alex Bellisle, who’d play the more radically irreverent one all night, was irrepressibly hilarious.

Indeed, some of the best skits happened when they bored in on particularly “female” predilections like dieting.  Battling to see who can have the thinnest slice of a birthday cake leads to Carisa Barreca launching into erotic rhapsody to the cake.

In addition to Barreca and Bellisle, Alexis J. Roston, Maria Randazzo, Katie Caussin and Kimberly Michelle Vaughn make up the cast.  The team acted as one; a tight, precise unit out to fulfill a mission.   And did they ever succeed.

Deconstructing the silliness of our conceits and showing them for what they are through comedy is one of the sweetest ways to accept truth.  It’s what makes She the People so strong.   There is no bitterness seeping through the humor.  It is simply wry acknowledgment molded into stories that reflect and rebuff our reality through laughter.

She the People:   Girlfriends’ Guide to Sisters Doing it for Themselves

Second City

Up Comedy Club

230 W. North Ave., 3^rd flr.

Thursday, Friday & Saturday at 8pm

Sunday at 7pm

Tickets start at $26

Plays through April 1, 2018