
Warning: No iconic Atlantan is safe from being skewered in the new Second City show “Miracle on 1280 Peachtree Street” running through Dec. 12 on the Alliance Theatre Hertz Stage.
Not even beloved WABE-FM “Second Cup Concert” host Lois Reitzes, whose voice is mocked at the start of the sketch comedy show as the audience is instructed to turn off “all cell phones, pagers and pacemakers.”
On opening night this week, the laughs started as soon as the audience noticed the seemingly random car honks were playing “Silent Night.”
Ensemble members Tara Ochs, Amy Roeder, Micah Sherman, Claudia Michelle Wallace, Ric Walker and Randy Havens even take on Bishop Eddie Long‘s alleged proclivities for young men in their rousing opening number (Too soon, you ask? Not according to the spirited reaction the Long reference got on opening night).
A sketch about CNN’s Fox-chasing, long embarrassing slide into the sludge of social media babble was particularly effective as a newscast about peace in the Middle East was turned into a Tweetisode in favor of a Lindsay Lohan update.
Former mayoral and Fulton County Commission Chair candidate Mary Norwood also made for irresistible comedic fodder for the Second City cast who played her as overly earnest and slightly menacing.
The cast’s improv sketches, solidly built around shouted suggestions from the audience, drew laughs as well, particularly a holiday party sketch that skillfully wove a unicorn and kitty litter into the punch lines.
A Phipps Plaza Santa sketch will alternately make Southerners squirm, smile and sweat.
Oddly, the only real misfires in the show? Sketches that attempt to poke fun at two incredibly rich veins of comedic gold: Tyler Perry and “The Real Housewives of Atlanta.”
Among the returning cast members from the Chicago comedy troupe’s first Alliance show “Too Busy To Hate. . .Too Hard To Commute” is Ric Walker, who famously serenaded former mayor Shirley Franklin in 2008 while sitting on herzonner’s lap.
Writes Walker in his cast bio: “He hopes Mayor Kasim Reed does not expect the same treatment.”
For tickets and more info: go to the official Alliance website.
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