Jonathan Langdon and Brandon Hackett, Toronto Sketch Comedy Festival 2020
For the Toronto Sketch Comedy Festival 2020, Hackett & Langdon (Brandon Hackett and Jonathan Langdon) deliver some comedy sketches that offer a nice mix of subject matter.
They take us from the absurdly awkward one-upmanship of two Black men encountering each other on the street to a domestic scenario in which one man tries to convince his husband that isn’t every other Black man he’s been seeing on television. Along the way, they skewer ideals of masculinity and explore some very Toronto-specific struggles—like the madness of the current rental market.
In my favourite sketch, Langdon pulls out all the stops for his vulgar, though bizarrely endearing, sketch comedy professor trying to convince an idealistic, socially conscious underling that people don’t want ‘telligent comedy, they want crass spectacle. Hackett settles into a straight man role for this standard bit, but the self-awareness of it pays off well at the end.
As a duo, I love their chemistry and comic rhythm, but the content of most sketches didn’t grab me. I think this dynamic team does have the potential to really knock me out, I just didn’t connect strongly to the specific material.