The best way to describe Tosh’s style is like the comedic love child of Andy Kaufman and Ashton Kutcher. The audience, for the most part, soaked up all he had to say and even the older people still appreciated some of his more obscure references. At one point, Tosh openly admitted that some of his jokes have no point were there just to screw with your head. You have to admire that kind of honesty. Saying that Tosh is unpredictable is an understatement. When he first came on stage the first thing he did was head straight for one of the waitresses just to throw her off guard and see what her reaction would be. Randomly throughout the show he would either scream or talk in a girly voice saying literally whatever came to his mind, no matter how absurd. The weirdest might have been when he suddenly yelled “boobies” in the most high pitched voice between two jokes that had nothing to do with women or sex at all. The whole night was a practice in misdirection.
It was impossible for me to tell if Tosh was improvising many of his jokes or not. Throughout a lot of the night he seemed to be having an almost direct dialogue with the audience and building a lot of his material out of that. The dialogue almost turned into an argument as one girl’s cell phone went off in the middle of his act, which is instant death for the unlucky soul who belongs to the phone. The girl seemed reluctant to apologize and for the next five or so minutes became the sole focus
of his act.
About halfway through the show, it became obvious to Tosh that he could get away with anything and the suburbanite crowd would eat it up. So he gave them everything he had, the more risqué the better. Pushing the envelope on just how offensive a comedian can get and still keep his audience (“what’s that? You want one more abortion joke?”), Tosh made fun of everything. If it was taboo, he made a joke about it.
Watching Tosh on stage was a lot of fun; he seemed extremely desperate to get off of it and interact with the crowd in person. Tosh is one of the few comedians today I’ve seen that make a point of using the whole stage to the point where it’s almost a prop. During one point he asked the audience what would happen if he just fell in the middle of his act and cracked his head open, he did this while balancing himself on the edge of the stage with a wry smile spread across his face.
For those unprepared, I could see how Tosh’s style might throw you off, but I think that’s the point. Tosh follows the style of many of the great comic revolutionaries who don’t go in for the easy jokes.
This was my first time at The Improv and I have to say I was impressed. The entire atmosphere of the venue is classy yet relaxed and every single person, from the ushers to the wait staff, is having fun.
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