STAGE
Arnez J
Fri.-Sun., Jan. 14 - 16
After a stint hosting BET's Comic View, Atlanta native Arnez J is back tearing up comedy clubs across the country. His hilarious physical comedy combines charisma and unique mannerisms that have garnered him comparisons to the likes of Jim Carrey, and he's quickly becoming one of comedy's shining stars. Give him time and he'll prove why he was dubbed "the black Jerry Lewis."
Caroline's on Broadway, 1626 B'way (betw. 49th & 50th Sts.), 212-757-4100; 8, 10:30, 12:30, $35, 2 drink min.
-Richard Nurse
Threat and Livestock
Fri., Jan. 14
For polished improv with neat plots and nary an unscripted laugh or mess-up, don't go see Threat. The three-man show relies more on outlandish scenarios and physical comedy, prepackaged with frat-boy jokes and ridiculous characters.
But, strange as it sounds, their show is brilliant, off-kilter and fast developing a loyal following among PIT fans. Jim Festante, Stephen Booth and Neutrino veteran Matt Donnelly ignore the fourth wall between stage and audience, allowing us access to their silly side-jokes and wisecracks. There's never an awkward or forced moment among the three, who've been performing together in various groups for the past eight years. And with just three improvisers on stage at any one time, the actors can get creative, making up multiple roles and jumping back and forth between characters. Played with a full cast, the sketches might not work as well. This is what improv is supposed to be: fun, lively and leaving an audience in stitches.
Opening is Livestock, an up-and-coming improv group with a knack for creating crazy, if uncomfortable, situations. Theirs is more cerebral than physical humor, a perfect appetizer to Threat.
People's Improv Theater, 154 W. 29th St. (betw. 6th & 7th Aves.), 212-563-7488; 9:30, $7.
-Lionel Beehner
Sara Schaefer Is Obsessed with You | Fri., Jan. 14Most of us have imagined ourselves hosting our own late-night talk show-large mahogany desk, six-piece band, cameras all around-but who among us has ever gone to the trouble of actually staging one? Meet Sara Schaefer, a likable Virginia native and comedian who-as the title tells-is obsessed with you. "Obsessed" might be the wrong word. "Spastic" is more like it, but in a nice, kid-sister sort of way. Her hyper-kinetic routine is what makes her endearing, honest.
When she interviews The Daily Show's Samantha Bee, Schaefer's neither sycophantic nor trying to be sassy; she comes off as if she were chatting up Bee at a bar. She even dubs a hilarious video of herself half-aping, half-mocking Bee's correspondent gig on tv. Kimya Dawson provides musical relief, crooning out a sing-along to "The Greatest Love of All."
Schaefer's talk show takes place not on a stage but in a drab, cookie-cutter cubicle, because, as she recently told Gothamist, "Offices have to be funny, or else I would have killed myself by now." And in true Oprah fashion, she hands out free gifts to the audience. Past guests have included writers Jonathan Ames and Andy Borowitz. This week, Schaefer interviews J.T. Petty, director of the horror movie Mimic: Sentinel. The musical guest is Kieran McGee.
Gene Frankel Theater, 24 Bond St. (betw. Bowery & Lafayette St.), 212-868-4444; 8, $8.
-Lionel Beehner
Tenderenda | Thurs.-Sun., Jan. 13-16Imagine that an envelope arrives in the mail. Inside is a sheaf of papers and a CD. Cautiously, you begin to read the mysterious writings, which alternate between incomprehensible and lyrical poesy. It might be the foundation of a Germanic fairytale. It might be the mad typing of a saint with the DTs. Popping in the CD doesn't help. You hear birds chirping, crickets clicking, sad horns blowing, fragments of symphony and a woman's voice whispering an imagined liturgy and singing to herself.
These clues turn out to be the source material for Karinne Keithley's Tenderenda. Based on Hugo Ball's 1919 novella, Tenderenda der Phantast, Keithley's multidisciplinary project slides Ball's silly and solemn texts into a childlike frame of imagination.
Ball was the maverick of Zurich Dada and chief tinkerer of the Cabaret Voltaire. Keithley is the maverick and chief tinkerer of Williamsburg's Ur dance salon. Since Dada erupted in response to the insanity of WW I, it seems timely to reinterpret Ball now. The artists of the Cabaret Voltaire, disgusted with a political climate that saw war as its only solution, abraded the social fabric of the bourgeoisie with the absurdity of their language. And it seems like they had a ball doing it. Ball himself, in all surviving pictures, looks half in the bag.
Keithley won a 2003 Obie as part of Talking Band's Painted Snake in a Painted Chair and is currently seeking an MFA with word wizard Mac Wellman at Brooklyn College, so she seems to have a special affinity with the syntax and tongue-in-chicanery of Ball's rhetoric. Her collaborators (Chris Yon, Peter Schmitz, Melissa Briggs and others) are an eclectic mixture of hooligans who promise to inhabit the innocent and unpredictable spirit of Cabaret Voltaire.
Danspace Project, 131 E. 10th St. (betw. 2nd & 3rd Aves.), 212-674-8194; 8:30, $15.