What if you took a three-ring circus, but condensed it to one stage and had all of the humans clowning like wild animals? It might look something like the raucous, ribald, riotously vaudevillian showcase that is Stamptown, which somehow convinced Netflix to book and film their performance during this May’s Netflix Is A Joke festival in Los Angeles and now broadcast it to a global streaming audience.
STAMPTOWN: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?
The Gist: The first thing you need to know is that Stamptown takes its name from Étampes, the French commune that’s served as home since 2011 to École Philippe Gaulier, the school that singlehandedly resurrected and reframed the sensibility of old-school clowning for a 21st century audience. Gaulier died earlier this year at 82. His most famous pupil is probably Sacha Baron Cohen, but over the past decade, Zach Zucker (The Joe Schmo Show, Sweethearts) and Stamptown have grown from a comedy duo (with Viggo Venn, the first comedian to win Britain’s Got Talent) into a merry band of mirthmakers who have taken their variety showcase from small stages at the Edinburgh Fringe and New York City to larger theaters in NYC, Los Angeles, London and around the world (they’ve also produced various one-person shows under the Stamptown banner).
The next thing you need to know is that Stamptown is rarely the same show twice.
The one constant is Zucker presiding over the comedy chaos as alter-ego “Jack Tucker,” a disheveled comedy hack from the Big Apple with relentless energy and zingers to sling, with his co-producers Jonny Woolley and Dylan Woodley aiding and abetting him; Woolley with sound effects from the booth, and Woodley skating, photographing the scenes, and prat-falling across the stage. The lineup from one night to the next might be completely different, featuring a mix of clowns, circus daredevils, stand-up comedians, musicians, and celebrity cameos. The Netflix taping came about as Stamptown was experiencing its Neil Patrick Harris Era. We’ll explain, maybe?
There’s also nudity. No explanation forthcoming.
What Comedy Special Will It Remind You Of? None.
Memorable Jokes: The lineup for the Netflix taping included quick-change duo Daredevil Chicken; Erin Farrington as Stamptown’s stage manager to go over the house rules; the aforementioned Neil Patrick Harris cameo (“We could only afford his appearance fee. If you’ve never seen the show before, that was it,” Tucker quips, although later, Harris baby birds beer into Tucker’s mouth before the two make out); Viggo Venn doing his hi-vis bit; The Sklar Brothers with a “land acknowledgement”; Martin Urbano as a “New York Times” critic reviewing the show in real-time; Cory Peter Lane shotgunning a beer can; sex robot Vanessa 5000 (Courtney Pauroso, who has a full Vanessa 5000 special out via Dropout); stand-up from Ike Ufomadu; Riki Lindhome “giving birth” to “nepo baby” Natalie Palamides, who then delivered jokes as a naked, bloody newborn; the BriTANicK guys (Brian McElhaney and Nick Kocher) plugging their Pizza Movie on Hulu and attempting to perform a sketch; The Voice UK‘s former semifinalist Jordan Gray performing a song about being trans, fully nude; and much more popping into and out of frame.
Our Take: As Tucker introduces Urbano, a plaintive horn bleats out something approximating two notes from “New York, New York,” to which Tucker jokes: “We also, in case you couldn’t tell, can’t really use copyright music, so we made sure to copy the right music.”
Stamptown had to make certain concessions to adapt to Netflix. Among them, having Venn do his his-vis vest routine to a chorus refrain of “Let’s Do It Again,” instead of the Daft Punk song, “One More Time,” that you’ve likely seen him on TV for it before. But they also make the song changes work for them. The beer chugging may not flow to Def Leppard, but that’s not the point. When Vanessa 5000 demonstrates a sexy dance, the alterations to make it not Nine Inch Nails effectively make her twerking funnier.
Without relying on the live audience, they also can make quick edits and employ multiple camera angles to heighten what otherwise be lulls instead of LOLs.
We can get a quick montage of a trumpeter Jonathan Daly, or a recurring bit promising a heroic turn from silent but deadly “clown boss” Chad Damiani, or jokes at the expense of other comedians trumpeted by Netflix.
All of which makes it funny because it’s true when Zucker at Tucker exclaims: “Can you believe they let us do this?”
And it makes it much more poignant and striking to have musical comedian Jordan Gray strip naked to perform a song on the piano about conservatives hating her for being trans while liberals make her feel like she’s extra special, just for being trans. “If I’m gonna be a joke than I might as well be in on it,” she sings.
Our Call: STREAM IT! As the show’s stage manager declares, “I’m standing over there and I’m understanding some of that,” part of the fun is not trying to understand everything that goes into a Stamptown show, but merely being willing to go along for the ride. Because more often than not, it’s one helluva ride.
Sean L. McCarthy works the comedy beat. He also podcasts half-hour episodes with comedians revealing origin stories: The Comic’s Comic Presents Last Things First.