WEEDING OUT THE STONED (Good Good Comedy): Highly entertaining

 

Someone here might not be high.
Someone here might not be high. “Officer” Alex Grubard tries WEEDING OUT THE STONED. Photo by Clay Hereth.

Remember when you used to smoke tons of weed but thought that no one knew you were stoned out of your gourd? You were wrong; everyone could totally tell. But how good a judge would you be now? Good Good Comedy challenges your detective skills with WEEDING OUT THE STONED, an amusing monthly show hosted by funnyman Alex Grubard.

The show is part of a full roster of themed shows organized by Good Good Comedy, an ambitious new group run by the minds behind the popular Five Dollar Comedy Week. These include another panel show “What’s My Line” where the audience tries to guess someone’s occupation, and “Phone It In”, a monthly festival of iPhone-shot movies. (See full schedule at goodgoodcomedy.com.)

In WEEDING OUT THE STONED, Grubard performs as a detective who has pulled over a “clown’s car” of 16 stoners, one of whom is actually sober. It’s his job—and the audience’s—to figure out “the narc”. We proceed through a series of interactive sobriety tests introduced by the sound of a bubbling bong. Several stoners are eliminated after each, leaving just one potential narc onstage.

These range from the illuminating (a sight test, a 30-second explanation on an assigned topic) to the the quixotic (a game of musical chairs). Grubard makes a good guide through the evenings investigation, entertaining and involving the packed house of twenty-somethings (who says Millennials don’t like performing arts?). He performs to a well-designed backdrop of subtitles and sound effects in a smoothly produced event.

Much of the evening’s success depends on the panelists, and thankfully there were several entertaining personalities among the presumptive stoners. “I could be one of the high ones,” claimed Tim Butterly, voted narc by the audience. And indeed it proved: Although he made impressive time in the backwards alphabet and remembered at least a couple lines of Meat Loaf’s “Paradise by the Dashboard Light”, Butterly confessed he was “high as fuck.” Our sober contestant, comedian Tommy Touhill, played the wastrel a bit by purposefully messing up his naming of cereals.

But WEEDING OUT THE STONED wasn’t really about detective work. Not every moment works and Grubard seems curiously obsessed with making sure everyone takes up their allotted time, even if just with awkward silence, but there is plenty of laughter and fast-moving entertainment. 

And they say it’s even funnier when you’re stoned. [PhilaMOCA, 531 N. 12th Street] November 11, 2015 and recurring monthly; goodgoodcomedy.com.

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