"You're either, like, 'I love it' or 'NO!'" Barry Rothbart laughed as he summed up the vibe of his crowd. The audience at Katacombes was oddly binary in their responses: half the jokes received tepid interest, but the other half made everyone laugh really hard. It was a bit weird to witness the audience fluctuate so drastically, but in the end, it evened out to be a pretty strong show.
Up-and-coming Montreal comedian Mike Carrozza opened by joking that his sore throat made him sound like he was constantly on the verge of crying in the middle of therapy, then he segued into some material about the proverb "If you teach a man to fish, he'll eat for a day…" He rambled a bit as he adapted to the half-full, half-hearted audience, but he found his stride and even got a few people to snort-laugh with his story about responding to suggestive texts like "What's my punishment? ;)" as if he was a professional police officer.
Rothbart admitted the crowd was making him question his material at some points of the show. His joke about dad bods was average, while his vision of weed-based lube making people want to feed Doritos to their vaginas was uniquely weird, but inexplicably didn't do well.
On the other hand, his riffs about Montreal were all amazing. His summarization of all Montreal street performers as "bees with ribbons" was absurdly perfect, as was his joke where he claimed that speaking indifferently and under your breath is the key to making French sound Quebecois. Having said that, Rothbart also had some planned material that killed. His bit about talking to a seven-year-old while high was hilarious, and his closer about seeing a woman that was so drunk that people couldn't even tell what language she was speaking was even better.
Up-and-coming Montreal comedian Mike Carrozza opened by joking that his sore throat made him sound like he was constantly on the verge of crying in the middle of therapy, then he segued into some material about the proverb "If you teach a man to fish, he'll eat for a day…" He rambled a bit as he adapted to the half-full, half-hearted audience, but he found his stride and even got a few people to snort-laugh with his story about responding to suggestive texts like "What's my punishment? ;)" as if he was a professional police officer.
Rothbart admitted the crowd was making him question his material at some points of the show. His joke about dad bods was average, while his vision of weed-based lube making people want to feed Doritos to their vaginas was uniquely weird, but inexplicably didn't do well.
On the other hand, his riffs about Montreal were all amazing. His summarization of all Montreal street performers as "bees with ribbons" was absurdly perfect, as was his joke where he claimed that speaking indifferently and under your breath is the key to making French sound Quebecois. Having said that, Rothbart also had some planned material that killed. His bit about talking to a seven-year-old while high was hilarious, and his closer about seeing a woman that was so drunk that people couldn't even tell what language she was speaking was even better.
