Still Frantics after all these years

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 09/04/2005 (7728 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

YES, the greatest hits will be revisited. But there’s a whole lot more to this ’80s-supergroup reunion than an older, slower, paunchier recitation of fan favourites.

And followers of Canadian sketch-comedy icons The Frantics will surely celebrate the news that the ’80s comedy troupe is approaching its reunion as a chance to recharge, reconsider and reinvent its signature style of humour.

“We decided that if we were going to do this, we wanted to be relevant,” said Frantics member Paul Chato, who will join original cast members Rick Green, Dan Redican and Peter Wildman onstage for two shows during the CBC Winnipeg Comedy Festival — first, in a special solo performance today at 2 p.m. at the Gas Station Theatre, and then tomorrow night as part of the CBC Gala at the Pantages Playhouse Theatre.

“In comedy, the audience’s expectation is that you’re going to do something new. However, we do have some really iconoclastic pieces — like Bill from Bala, the old Star Trek sketch and Mr. Canoehead — that people really love hearing, so we put them in, too. We’re kind of like The Who on tour — we’ve almost got too much material to draw from.”

For the benefit of the uninitiated, the four-member comedy troupe was founded in 1979 and, through the ’80s, became a popular comedic force on CBC Radio before being offered a shot at a network TV show called 4 on the Floor, which ran for a single 13-episode season in 1985.

The Frantics’ disbanded after the TV series was cancelled, but recent Internet-driven interest prompted Chato, Green, Redican and Wildman to consider reviving the act a few years ago.

“Rumours to the contrary, we never split up in any acrimonious way,” Chato explained in a recent telephone interview. “…We decided that we really didn’t want to go to the United States, so that was it.

“Everyone went off and did their own thing, and one of the things that kept us from getting back together was that we didn’t know what kind of interest there was out there. But we set up a website, and the traffic was substantial, from all over North America… We started talking about it a bit, and decided to get together and do a show. We took the plunge, wrote a shocking amount of new material, and just enjoyed the heck out of it. After getting over that hurdle, it has been terrific.”

One of the things the four comics have found is that being away from the group for 15 years has allowed time and life experience to re-energize the old material while providing a deeper, more discerning perspective to the new stuff.

“If we hadn’t taken this 15-year break and had just kept doing it during that time, I think the only material we’d be writing would be the typical on-the-road, ‘airplane-food-is-so-bad’ kinds of jokes,” Chato said. “Luckily, we all went away and had real lives and had families, so our observational strengths are even more acute and harder edged than before.

“We’re going after some interesting topics in a much more mature way, and the audiences are responding wonderfully. I wouldn’t say that it’s angry, because that’s not our style, but the stuff is definitely not as light and fluffy as it was before… We’re taking more chances, writing edgier material and we really feel like we have something to contribute on the comedic stage.”

After making the decision to reunite, the four comics made a full commitment to the project, performing a show of all-new material once a month at Second City’s Tim Simms Theatre in Toronto. And after more than a year of writing and performing, The Frantics felt ready to take the show on the road — and back to the tube, in the form of an hour-long special being taped for CTV and the Comedy Network.

One of the things that has been fascinating — and more than a little bit amusing — to the four performers is the fact that age has forced them to reconsider some of the characters in their classic comedy bits.

“We are now the age of some of the characters we were playing 15 years ago,” Chato laughed. “We wrote an awful lot of stuff about business guys and married guys and guys doing ordinary stuff, and they were almost all aged 45 or 50. And now we’re that age.

“There was one moment early on in our resurrection when Rick was taking on the character of someone in his 50s, and he lowered his voice. And I tapped him on the shoulder and said, ‘Rick, you ARE that character now. You don’t have to lower your voice.’ And one of the funny things we’ve discovered is that some of sillier stuff that got a so-so reaction 20 years ago is now getting huge laughs when 50-year-old guys do it. People are suddenly finding it very funny.”

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Rimshots from the comedy fest: As host of Wednesday night’s Oh God! gala at the Pantages Playhouse Theatre, Sean Cullen made an early bid to reassure audience members who might be worried about the touchy nature of the evening’s subject matter: “Don’t worry — if the first (comic) doesn’t deeply offend you, there’ll be another one along in a few minutes who surely will.”

Talking about religion as portrayed on film, Cullen quipped, “… and then there was Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ. I liked it, but I thought it was the weakest of the Mad Max movies.”

Writer/actor Darrell Dennis provided an aboriginal perspective on religion in the guise of a native elder who was equal parts wise and wiseacre: “Before the white man, we did not have religion as we now know it. Instead, we had something called ‘happiness.'”

At Wednesday’s late-night Best of the Fest show at the King’s Head Pub, host Dan Licoppe talked about his appearance Tuesday at the festival-opening show at the McPhillips Street Station, explaining that he had never been to a casino before and expected to find something like the only gambling houses he’s ever seen — in James Bond movies.

“It’s not quite the same,” he reflected. “Not a lot of tuxedos and ball gowns at the McPhillips Street Station. More like sweatpants and (butt) cracks.”

Toronto comic Greg Eckler was bemoaning his history of bad luck and even worse judgment, but lightened the moment by pointing out that there are others in worse shape than he is: “I’m not the biggest loser in the world. I’ll tell you who the biggest loser in the world is — the guy who said this last fall: ‘I’m flying to the Stanley Cup finals on Jetsgo!’ O for 2, buddy. O for 2.”

brad.oswald@freepress.mb.ca