A line of eager students stretched across the lobby and out the door of the Zellerbach Theatre on Monday night in anticipation of Mask and Wig's seventh annual Intercollegiate Comedy Festival, but College sophomore Phyllis Caces didn't mind waiting in the long line to get good seats.
Caces, who went to the festival last year, wanted "to see if Tim Meadows measures up to [previous host] Stephen Colbert, who was hilarious." By all accounts, she was not disappointed.
Meadows, a former Saturday Night Live cast member and star of The Ladies Man, opened the event with the improv version of Mad Libs as he -- and the audience -- recounted his arrival in Philadelphia, which resulted in Meadows observing the throwing of crack in Rittenhouse Square. After furious applause for the punchline of "in Detroit, we just smoke it," four sketch comedy groups were featured: Princeton's Triangle Club, Yale's the Fifth Humour, the University of Maryland's Sketchup and Penn's own Mask and Wig.
The Princeton troupe specialized in penis and dead-hooker jokes. Its most well-received skit, however, involved a girl playing the Star Wars theme on a shofar, a Jewish musical instrument made out of a ram's horn.
Meadows noted that Maryland's Sketchup was ranked as one of the best sketch comedy groups in Washington by The Washington Post.
"And you know when The Washington Post ranks you as one of the best sketch comedy groups, they ain't fucking around," he said.
Skethcup's comedy was both shocking and topical, including butt-sucking and a faux Snickers commercial noting that after President Bush's re-election, legalized gay marriage was "gonna be a while."
The group's most successful bit, however, was its simplest. One of the participants dressed up as the Tootsie Roll Pop owl determining "how many bites" it takes to eat a Qdoba burrito. After much chewing and spewing, the answer was found to be three.
The Fifth Humour tapped pop culture for its spoof of Full House, in which Danny Tanner must break the bad news to Michelle that she has cancer. The Elis' skit came complete with a drag Kimmy Gibbler, garnering roaring laughter from the crowd of around 900 students who packed into the theater.
"Three guys, one house, raising a family," the Gibbler impersonator sagely observed. "Wake up and smell the orgy!"
Mask and Wig closed the show with its 116-year-old brand of musical, cross-dressing comedy.
In addition to a Guess Who's Coming to Dinner spoof featuring Meadows doing cocaine lines off a kitchen table, the group skewered Penn institutions such as the dance group Strictly Funk, University President Amy Gutmann and a cappella groups Penn Masala and Off the Beat.
Most notably, however, at the end of the event, Meadows reprised his famous SNL routine, producing a UTV13 version of the "Ladies' Man" in which he dispensed advice to a lonely-hearted freshman and to food truck operator Hemo, who needed to know how to confess his love for fellow vendor the Real Le Anh.
College junior Faye Ibars loved the show, saying, "Tim Meadows rocked my world."
Festival organizer and College senior Gabe Laskin was pleased with the warm reception the show received, noting that Meadows is a "great person" and that the troupe was very happy he agreed to serve as emcee.
