Something was noticeably different when the Buffoons took the stage on Friday night at the the Charleston Ballet Theatre. Something was off. Something was missing. And that something wasn’t Bobby Moynihan, the third member of the sketch comedy group.
Yeah, Moynihan wasn’t there, but he hasn’t been for awhile now. He’s since moved on to Saturday Night Live.
No. It wasn’t that.
When it came time for the comedy duo to take the stage, Charlie Sanders stood alone. Eugene Cordero was absent. Sanders noted that the evening’s performance would be split in two. He’d go on first and Cordero would follow later.
By and large, Sanders was up for a solo show. It wasn’t stand-up exactly; it was more of a spoken word performance similar to what Henry Rollins does — a mostly true tale that’s told at a machine-gun paced and filled large doses of humor and righteous indignation.
The story centered around Sanders’ unusual upbringing — a chubby white kid and the son of an arch-hippie, he was raised a Muslim. More specifically, he was raised a dervish. For a good 30 minutes, Sanders kept the audience entertained with one anecdote after another. It was a quality set, but not exactly what this reviewer at least expected.
Eugene Cordero’s one-manner was a disappointment. It moved at a snail’s pace and quite frankly just felt flat throughout. An extended bit about a young Chinese kid at an open mike night had moments of brilliance but ultimately felt off. Another involving a television anchor attempting stand-up — an allegedly true story — sucked wart-covered balls. A note to Cordero: If you’re going to do the late Bernie Mac and Heath Ledger, dude, you’ve got to make it count. Otherwise, it just feels cheap. —Chris Haire
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