John Hood - Quick Clownin' Around

Quick Clownin' Around

Drew and Crew heading to the Kirby.

Everybody loves a clown. (Everybody but Kramer, that is.) The bulbous nose, the overdone eyes, those endless shoes; the stomach-pitting pratfalls, the manic antics, the perpetual freeze of the layer-caked face. Painted smiley or sad, a clown remains the endearing same. Soul played silly for all the world's pleasure.

When it's a class clown, however, the love gets lost in the mix-up. The wisecracks, the comebacks, the distracts, all get blamed on some mixed-up kid. There may be a titter or a twinge, sometimes even a muffled guffaw, but there's rarely ever love. Too bad. And too wrong. 'Cause that distraction at the back of the class is usually the quickest wit in the room.

class clown's gotta be sharp, gotta be on, gotta be funny. None of which are easy. All of which are loveable.

Drew Carey's of that latter class of clown. Sharp despite his dullish frame, on in spite of his off color, and ever, ever funny, he's that cat in the back writ large, risking it all for a laugh. There's no question Drew's done his time cutting up the classroom, no doubt his spitballs of verbal quick has driven legions of batty teachers and their bratty pets even battier and brattier. He's a culprit, the refreshing rejoinder amid another dull day. You can see it behind his prop Poindexters, you can hear it in his chide the man knows how to think fast from his seat.

And he's made America love him for it. You don't get to do ten years on TV without a whole lotta lovin.' Drew's done a decade, and then some. When the cheeky Ohioan isn't taking it on the cheek from Mimi Bobek in his self-named Show, he's provoking some of the smartest pratfalling in boob-tubery as ring leader of Whose Line is it Anyway?, itself a high comedic caste of upper class clowning. Bringing the Brit hit to America was one shrewd move; translating it from a Comedy Central novelty rerun to an ABC/Disney also rerun was even shrewder. It raised the bar both for Carey and for comedy.

And what a ha-ha bar Carey and his cohorts did raise. Right angled and allwrong in only the best of all possible ways, Anyway? and its Green Screen successor, wedges itself in edgewise, a crack in the corner of a crooked grin. Loose and astute, with a speedy keen spread to its refinedly unrefined finishing. If hysterics can be compounded, Carey and crew belong to comedy's thrice-great compound. Three times double-plus funny. With wings.

It's the kinda improv that stands to improve something, a dynamic of which even a Pacino or a Streep would approve. Skelton meets Stella Adler on a Methodic soundstage of happy accidents. No rehearsal, no ropes, no net. Take a word, any word, a prompt, any prompt, and jump through it. Anyway you want. Anywhere you dare.

Carey and Co. have made a ridiculous art of the even more ridiculous dare. Bare and brave and bold and, yes, sometimes even beautiful.

The company Drew keeps is some fun company:

Chip Esten, who's guested on Cheers, Murphy, Married and Just Shoot Me, Providence and Party of Five, Diagnosis Murder (really), JAG (double really), and Star Trek: The Next Generation (you can't get more really than that), has gone from the West End (Buddy) to Wim Wenders (Ten Minutes Older) and back again. And it shows in every agile muscle in his bony-maroney body.

Kathy Kinney, bestest known as the aforementioned Mimi Bobeck, not only spent two years as the town librarian on the inimitable Bob Newhart's sadly imitive Newhart and made wily walk-ons in Seinfeld, Sanders and Grace, she's big screened in everything from Stanley and Iris to Scrooged, This Boy's Life to Three Fugitives. She shows too, with the kinda overstated understatement only a showy can possess.

Greg Proops, the perennial leading sidekick, is not only a fixture of both the U.S. and the U.K. versions of Anyway? (and everyone knows that tickling 'em on two sides of the pond is no easy feat), he's ingrained himself in our pop animesque psyche as the mad scientist in Stripperella (with Pam Anderson, natch), Gommi the articulate worm in Kaena the Prophecy (w/Kirsten Dunst), and as Fode, one half of the Pod Race Announcer in the Star Wars dynasty.

Then there's Drew. He of Show, he of shows. The Libertarian ex-Marine who's duked it out with A&W Restaurants and fled from Kane on the World Wrestling Federation's 30 man Royal Rumble. He of Lasik and stents and Dirty Jokes and Beer, the Walk of Fame starred star name-checked in Bowling for Soup's emo jangle Ohio (Come Back to Texas). And the only Friar's Club roastee who's sung and danced a theme along to Mott the Hoople.

Call 'em: Mr. Hilarious and his band of Merry Hilarity.

This Sunday, the very same troupe that has graced all the world's stages, braced all the world's screens big and small, and cracked up even the most stone-faced among us, will hit the Kirby. Twice. At 3. Then again at 7. There will be risk, there will be riot, there will be rolling in the aisles.

And we will all be known by the company we keep, the company that keeps quick clowning around.