“I got a new wife,” said comic Andrew Mayer as the crowd burst into laughter. Mayer went on to describe how he likes having his wife in on his jokes when he goes around “being a crazy person to strangers.”
Mayer continued, “Every time I’m in downtown Boston and someone asks me what time it is, I don’t ever wear a watch, so I just check my pulse, and I just guess at the time.”
Meyer was one of four comedians from Boston who performed stand-up comedy in Susie’s last Friday. Dave Lamb opened the show, followed by Jeff Smith, Carolyn Riley, and headliner Mayer.
“I know these guys really well because I work with them a lot… For a lot of people, if you’re new and you get to the point that you can open for someone, it’s good to get that headliner to bring you along, then you go with that person. But it takes a lot of work to get to that place,” said Riley.
At the beginning of his set, Lamb asked the audience if they had been to a real comedy show before, clarifying “not this one.” The four comedians, accustomed to performing at locations such as clubs or casinos, tried to adjust their sets to better fit a high school audience. Audience member Mary Muromcew ’22, however, felt that some of the sets would have worked better with an adult audience.
“[Jeff Smith] was the most relatable. The other guys were talking about adult issues but we can’t really connect with that,” said Muromcew.
According to Smith, he gained a sense of what to say to different audiences through performing experience.
Smith said, “You learn to figure it out; in the beginning you have no jokes. And then once you build up you have a bunch a jokes. And with experience of doing it in front of enough people, you know what works with which demographic… It’s really a profession where the more you do it, the more you figure out.”
The comedians also incorporated Andover into their sets, contrasting Andover with the schools they attended. Lamb joked that he and the other comedians were nervous about performing for a “prestigious academy.”
“In general I think there were some jokes that they probably reused from other shows that didn’t work as well as they might have with a different audience, but they also added a lot of jokes either Andover-specific or probably meant for a teenage audience and that worked really well… overall I really enjoyed the whole show,” said audience member Anjalie Kini ’19.
Some comedians touched on riskier topics and used profanity regularly in their sets. Audience member Kini commented on how uncensored the performance was.
“I think they were uncensored in terms of both profanity but also the topics they covered. [For example], the female comic made a joke about her Adderall use which admittedly got a not-so-enthusiastic response, but was a risky joke I didn’t expect them to be allowed to make,” said Kini.
