|
| |
|
|
THE DAVID LETTERMAN AUDITIONS
|
|
|
|
|
If any single show during the sixth annual Boston International Comedy & Movie Festival captured the event’s founding impulse, it was Friday’s "David Letterman Auditions" at the North End’s Improv Asylum. The week-long fest — inspired by the Montreal Comedy Festival — was started by comedian Jim McCue and other organizers primarily as a way to lure talent scouts and agents here to see some of New England’s funniest performers. For this show they snared Eddie Brill, the comedy talent coordinator for The Late Show with David Letterman. Only a few dozen stand-up artists make it to Letterman’s stage each year, so the competition’s intense. And even winning Brill’s favor doesn’t guarantee a slot — they’re filled to 2007. Letterman himself has final approval. Brill is no stranger to Boston. The Emerson College graduate launched his own career as a laugh maker, and he managed the comedy club Paper Moon here in the mid ’80s. In 1997 he became the warm-up comedian for The Late Show. He still loosens up Letterman’s audiences. And when he’s not at New York City’s Ed Sullivan Theater working on the program, he’s flying around the country doing stand-up, conducting workshops, and looking for new talent. At the Improv Asylum, Brill got a dose of good humor from such local veterans as host Tony V, Comedy Studio operator Rick Jenkins, George MacDonald, and Tim McIntire, plus relative newcomers Peter Dutton and Joe Wong, among others. Brill sat in a corner taking copious notes that he’d vowed to share with the auditioners after the show. All the comics deserved high marks for their stagework, which ranged from Jenkins’s nice-guy storytelling to Dutton’s deadpan absurdism to Tom Gilmore’s imitations of police and fire-truck sirens. Who if any of the auditioners will get a shot at the national exposure Letterman provides remained a mystery after the show, but the smart money’s on Wong, who used his diminutive physique, poor driving skills, and Asian heritage as a springboard to slay the crowd.
BY TED DROZDOWSKI
|
