Review by Steve Bennett

Man, comics are a seedy bunch of amoral assholes. Or at least a good proportion of comics who perform at in a strip club, at midnight, in a show called So I'm Fucking This Girl Right? are.

The idea, presumably, is to give the audience vicarious enjoyment through the wild road tales of horny young men free of responsibility or moral compass. But oftentimes, most notably with the show’s creator and compere Ari Shaffir, it all comes across as miserably tragic, as the sex-starved performers use desperate prostitutes or take back to their hotel rooms women they consider pig-ugly, mentally unstable or STD-ridden (or possibly all three) for pathetic, empty encounters.

Let’s not be prudish here, as there’s often nothing better than a filthy sex story. Bur Shaffir doesn’t seem to have the self-awareness that would put the joke on him. He gets laughs because he employs the cadence and rhythm of an experienced stand-up, but were they written down, his stories, which contain little in the way of punchlines, would surely seem more sad than funny.

Hannibal Buress was, thankfully, a little more modest, suggesting that most of his stories start not with ‘So I'm fucking this girl…’ but with ‘So I'm trying to fuck this girl…’ He’s got material that fits this show’s brief, but the writing is much stronger, so even when he appals, he does so in elegant style, with clear intent and amusing turn of phrase.

Tom Segura took us back to the unedifying, talking about the time he had unprotected sex with a dirty (in all senses of the word) girl in Tunisia. This is probably the sort of show where ‘too much information!’ can’t be a criticism, but he did furnish us with a lot of unnecessary details in the build-up, with an occasional smart metaphor no substitute for the lack of jokes.

Moesha Kasher had the grace not to be proud of his story, about fulfilling a fetish to sleep with an obscenely overweight girl, so proved more endearing than most of his colleagues. Plus his choice of tale gave him licence to wheel out an arsenal of ‘fat jokes’ – as he readily admitted – which might be unkind, but did make for the most gag-filled routine of the night.

For the piece de resistance, it was something of a coup to persuade Canadian comedy superstar Russell Peters to appear in such insalubrious surroundings. And full kudos to him for stepping up to the plate, with the candour to admit his foot fetish and tell his R-rated encounters with porn stars and comedy-club waitresses, while keeping the laughs coming.

It’s remarkable to see such a broad mainstream act go dirty, and do it so well. Whatever you think of the predominantly race-based observational comedy that has made him so big, this routine was an impressive display of his comedy skills out of his comfort zone. You wonder how many of the edgier, dirtier comics on Shaffir’s bill could have made the transition in the other direction, and played Peters’ wide audience.

Published: 27 Jul 2011