Review: A Masterpiece of Comic … Timing

“Comedy doesn’t necessarily have to ‘mean’ anything,” says producer Jerry Cobb (David Pierini) in B Street Theatre’s world premiere of Robert Caisley’s A Masterpiece of Comic … Timing. “You take a hundred jokes and put it in two acts, there’s your plot.”

There are lots of jokes (some cleverly borrowed from other sources) that take up all of the crazy action going on on stage; there is a running gag and an early plot point that returns at the end to tie things up. There’s sexist humor, offensive humor, good clean humor, slapstick humor and weather aberrations. When it all comes to an end, the audience is still laughing uproariously. Nobody cares that it really didn’t mean anything.

That this show works so well is due to the strong cast, some of the funniest in Sacramento. Pierini is a loud, blustery comic in the manner of Nathan Lane, who directs most of the action on stage.

Jason Kuykendall is Danny “Nebraska” Jones, the melancholy writer who has lost his comic muse. Kuykendall is hilarious from the moment he enters the room and flops on the couch.

Then there is Andy Lee-Hillstrom as Cobb’s assistant, Charlie, who is that stereotypical lackey important people can’t seem to live without. With his ramrod straight spine and his tiny mustache, he becomes a caricature, but one that is very funny,

Elisabeth Nunziato also takes a comic turn as the electric-haired Nola Hart, a girl with whom Danny has recently broken up with but also brought in to help him over his malaise. While the first act drags a bit, things move forward at a dizzying speed in Act 2.