A week after Valentine’s Day, UNH’s Sketched Out comedy troupe put on their first show of the spring semester, LoveShaq.
“It’s the smallest cast we’ve ever had,” club president Bethany Kaminsky said, “We only have seven people instead of the usual 10 or 11.”
Sketched Out also decided to try something new to commemorate Valentine’s Day.
“This is the first show that we will be reading original poetry between the skits,” Kaminsky said. The poems were all original and written by the cast and included titles such as “I’m in Love with the Cat That Lives in My Yard,” and “A Poem by a Southern Boy.” The lines of the poems were pure, real and raw, like when Ethan Letourneau read, “Our love was like a waterfall: moist” and Luke O’Connell’s “Her face was a perfect oval, like a circle that had its sides gently compressed by a thigh master.”
The first skit of the night was titled “Gino’s Landscaping and Pubic Hair Styling,” written by Evan Kelly. The skit was a commercial for Gino’s business and a landscaper and pubic hair stylist, complete with a jingle, customer testimonials and the slogan “We’ll trim your bush!”
“Gino is a true professional, he treated my family jewels like the crown jewels,” said Kelly with a wink to the audience.
“He does trees really well!” Alyssa Malcolm explained.
Following this commercial was a 1950s style sitcom fit with a laugh track and corny jokes, written by Kaminsky. This episode followed the sitcom’s father’s dissent into madness trying to figure out if his memories were real or not, while his wife laughed and knitted a scarf with a laugh track going on in the background. As the father became more self-aware that he was in an episode of a TV show, some greater power decided he needed to be replaced with another father. The skit begins again with a different father telling corny jokes and laughing along with his knitting wife.
Taking a break from the TV theme, Sketched Out took us back to driver’s education and the perils of drunken driving, written by Kelly. Two convicts visited Durham High School to scare kids into never drinking alcohol, especially on the upcoming prom night. “You’re driving home drunk,” one of the convicts yells at a student, “and BAM! You hit your house.”
“Is that what you want?” the other convict asks. “Do you literally want to kill your family over a third of a Coors Light?” Once the convicts make sure that the students understand the perils of drinking underage, they go back to the prison letting the students, and the audience, absorb this life lesson.
The final skit of the night was a love game, written by Letourneau. The contestant, “Tom,” asks three lucky ladies questions about their favorite drinks, early 2000s movie quotes, songs to set the mood (Blink 182’s “I Miss You”) and addictions to Quaaludes. Ultimately, the women left when Tom’s real name was discovered to be “Gilbert,” and Gilbert was set up with his mother’s friend’s daughter, Agatha.
While the whole audience was laughing along with skits, Sketched Out made the crowd laugh even when trying to set up chairs and tables between skits and poems. Kelly had been left alone to fold a table on his own but reassured the crowd, “don’t worry, I can take this beast on solo. Just like taming a wild bronco.”
A Sketched Out alum was in the audience and the troupe took every opportunity they could to roast him. When it was quiet on stage you could hear people holding back giggles, and the audience would double over laughing at the punchlines and improv.
Sketched Out performs shows every month on Wednesday nights in the Entertainment Center at 8:00 p.m. They hold auditions for new members at the beginning of every fall and spring.