Hall pass Sketch legend Bruce McCulloch embraces dark humour in one-man show By: Jen Zoratti Posted: 4:46 PM CDT Wednesday, Mar. 18, 2026

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This article was published 18/03/2026 (184 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Gallows humour. Dark humour. Black humour. Whatever you want to call it, Bruce McCulloch’s a master of it.

The Canadian comedian, musician, author, actor, director and founding member of sketch-comedy troupe the Kids in the Hall was once singled out in a Kids review as being the “dark purple slice” of the group.

“And not in a very complimentary way, I don’t think, about me,” he says, over the phone from Toronto.

“But I actually took it as a compliment, and I do think I am the dark purple slice of the Kids in the Hall. And so, the belly of the show really is about dark humour that we use in tough times and to get through bad situations, and that’s how we lean on each other.”

The show he’s referring to is Dark Purple Slice, the one-man theatre show he’s bringing to the West End Cultural Centre on Sunday.

Dark comedy is often talked about as a coping mechanism — gotta laugh to keep from crying, as the idiom goes — but McCulloch, 64, has learned it’s also a powerful site of connection.

“There’s something that happens when a group of people are together because they do become one and we kind of share each other’s problems. I have a line in the show, which is, ‘Ever get so lonely that you go to the dentist just to be touched?’ That’s kind of a dark joke, right? But it gets the hugest laugh because people can feel connected to that notion of loneliness,” he says.

A big part of that connection comes from laughing (or crying, it’s OK, no judgment) with other people in a dark room.

“It’s actually beautiful,” he says.

“I do a thing now that I interact with the audience. I don’t want to say too much about it but stuffies are involved is all I’ll say. And I’ll ask, ‘Who’s had a bad year?’ And almost every hand goes up. And then I go into the audience, and I talk to some people, and I’ll get ‘Oh, it’s the anniversary of my sister’s death and, boy, did I need that.’ There is stuff that happens to me almost every show that is earth-shattering.

“Maybe it’s because I’m not 22, I’m not some weird TikTok guy saying some crazy shit — if they come to the show, generally it’s because they know me, and they’ve known me for a while.”

Since co-founding the Kids in the Hall with Dave Foley, Kevin McDonald, Mark McKinney and Scott Thompson in 1984, McCulloch has flexed his comic and creative muscles in all the ways one can as a writer and performer. But there’s something extra special for him about connecting one-on-one with a live audience.

“It’s my mission. Like, it really is. I am happy to be in a hotel in Winnipeg and know that I can lay it down for as many people as I get to perform for. I have a family, and I have TV shows, I do, but this is my mission in a way that other things really aren’t,” he says.

“…The belly of the show really is about dark humour that we use in tough times and to get through bad situations, and that’s how we lean on each other.”

While the show deals with death and life’s other heavier traumas, it’s also about the little daily injustices McCulloch has observed and collected over his life, such as the woman he saw get splashed by a bus who then said, to no one in particular, “But it’s my birthday.”

“I carry all of those in my body. Every weird thing I’ve ever seen or thought is still with me, and I let some of those out. And there may be things other people wouldn’t think about,” he says.

“I’m obsessed with the furniture at the side of the road, the corduroy couch, because that’s also me. I feel like I’m actually that corduroy couch. This show is sort of the universality of small failures and embracing our lot.”

Dark Purple Slice is also the title of an album McCulloch created with his longtime musical collaborator Craig Northey, of Odds and Trans-Canada Highwaymen fame. (Northey did the music for McCulloch’s sitcom Young Drunk Punk, among other projects.)

It’s not officially out yet, but people can score a vinyl copy at the show, and the single, Life is for Livin’, featuring Kevin McDonald, is streaming.

“I can’t believe I’m this age and I’m doing a record, but yep, I’m doing a record and making vinyl,” he says. “It was very nice to be able to open the box of my vinyl and take off the cellophane as I had done for Quadrophenia by the Who when I was 13 years old.”

McCulloch is proof positive there are no deadlines in life. As long as you’re alive, it’s never too late to do the things you want to do.

“There’s always reasons to not do stuff,” he says. “I find, as I get older, I’m finding more reasons to do stuff.”

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