Word of Mouth
Under the Influence
The two solo shows now appearing at Second City could have been a final exam in Anatomy of Humor for the city’s thousands of students of improv-based comedy. OK, class, what bone connects to the funny bone? Ali Farahnakian’s Word of Mouth is not funny, while Megan Grano’s Under the Influence is. Explain the reasons why.
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At first blush, Grano’s show (directed by Abby Sher) looks like a nightmare extension of this romance with the mirror: Enough about me, what do you think about me? We were instructed to “sign in and read the wall,” a wall covered with photos of the performer and her parents and friends, her Weight Watchers food diary, her family’s “newspaper.”
That’s the key distinction between the shows: Grano is generous to other people while Farahnakian is harsh. There’s certainly a place for harsh solo comedy (stand-up exists for that excoriating purpose), but you have to make sure you’re funny. And if you’re going to do a one-character show about the meaning of life, you’d better be Samuel Beckett. People play to their strengths, of course, and Grano can transform herself simply by picking up a pen or putting on glasses. She succeeds in portraying people wholly other from her in gender, age, nationality, and set of concerns. She even manages a credible imitation of a man failing to deflower a virgin. By contrast, Farahnakian is his pleasant self first, last, and always. The elaborate prop table he keeps onstage serves mostly to highlight the amount of effort it takes for him to present someone else.
