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Pablo Francisco invokes the spirits |
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Written by JORDAN BRANDES / Photos by ALANA GRELYAK
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Wednesday, 17 October 2007 |
I can only imagine what it is like inside Pablo Francisco’s head. It must be a barrage of different personalities all fighting for attention. More than anything else Francisco is a comic of voices and he has literally thousands of them. Watching him perform on stage is like witnessing a performance that is one part exorcism and one part comic genius.
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Pablo Francisco
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 Entertainment
Art
The Improv
Schaumburg, Ill.
March 15, 2007
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The moment he got on stage I knew this wasn’t going to be a standard show. The first impression of him I had was that he was a modernized version of the sound effects guy in “Police Academy” gone wrong. For the first 10 minutes or so he exercised so many voices I honestly had no clue what was going on. It was like all of a sudden he was joined on stage by a cast of hundreds and they were all colliding into each other.
Though prominently featured as a Latino comedian, much of Francisco’s humor is universal and it was rare during the performance for him to discuss ethnic topics, although one of his funniest sketches of the night was his re-imagining of “Back to the Future.” He replaced Michael J. Fox with a young Latino kid and started running all over the stage. “Como esta Marty! kooky kooky flux capacitor!” I couldn’t stop laughing throughout the entire sketch.
After his initial warm-up, things got a lot more fluid and he started to crank out some amazing material. I was astounded how dead on all of his impressions seemed to be, and he pulled out some pretty obscure ones. During one sketch he showed us in complete detail what’d it be like for Danny Glover and Gary Busey to have sex together in his version of a twisted movie entitled “Homie-sexuals.” Francisco’s ability to mimic even the smallest of mannerisms brought those two to life hilariously. One can tell that Francisco also likes to mess with people’s heads. That really shows in his style of humor. One of his best sketches was his detailed list of songs that you just cannot have sex to. Providing full sound effects of both sex and sound simultaneously he showed the audience that as hard as you try it is impossible to get it on to System of a Down. But it is a really good way to get back at a roommate you don’t like, he explained.
Within no time Francisco was sweating up a storm. It is no wonder; no comic I have ever seen has used as much of the stage as he did. The entire area was one big playground for him to have fun with. On more than one occasion he turned the microphone holder into a stripper’s pole. There seemed to be a sense of happy anarchy flowing throughout the entire performance. Francisco is one of those comedians that is best when showing more than telling so every sketch feels much bigger than your standard comedy show.
Every so often I’d pick out one of his famous voices in the show. As one of the character voices on the television show “Family Guy” Francisco can pull just about any one out of his gallery of voices and do what he wants with them. Francisco is such a chameleon of voices that seeing him perform live is really worth it. Once he gets into a good groove and deep into his act, the entire audience is at his mercy, and he rules the stage. Powered by AkoComment 2.0! |
