moontower recap
Moontower Day Three: Mulaney's new material, riffing with Rory Scovel, aterrifying Freudian slip and more
Photo by Jon Shapley
Rachel FeinsteinPhoto courtesy of Rachel Feinstein
John MulaneyPhoto by Jon Shapley
Chelsea PerettiPhoto by Jon Shapley
Baron VaughnPhoto by Jon Shapley
With so much going on in Austin this week for the Moontower Comedy and Oddity Festival, it’s impossible to catch every single thing happening on stages across the city. CultureMap’s comedy correspondents will be recapping the fest daily, highlighting their favorite acts, unforgettable moments and more.
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An exceptionally difficult to pin down performer, the stage persona of Rory Scovel is as inexplicable as it is hilarious. His is the type of front that obfuscates a comic’s normal personality just enough to allow the uninitiated begin to mistake him for an honest-to-goodness crank, while still showing regular flashes of a sweet, genial disposition that normally defines the South Carolina native. Luckily for the modest crowd that filled up the tiny Beale Street Tavern, for the late Double Header with Paul Varghese, by the end of his forty-plus minute set there was no one in the audience left outside of Scovel’s fold.
Leaning heavily on the improvisational elements that fleshed out the best bits from his 2011 album, Dilation, Scovel spent most of his time last night on fresh subjects, riffing endlessly through imagined the offenses to his “delicate” sensibilities presented by such fiends as festival-sponsored product-placement (IE, the bottle of water that he just wanted to pause to sip from) or a particularly strange type of sex toy, which could only necessitate some sort of “basement beneath a basement, acrypt”, to house.
It’s a testament to Scovel’s incredible skill that he could mine such subjects for minutes on end without seemingly saying much of anything and have the crowd laughing in rapturous bewilderment the entire time. If his forthcoming Comedy Central half-hour continues to build the buzz around Scovel as one of the best comedians working today, he might never play to such a small festival room again…
Whenever the ND has a show that needs the audience sitting in chairs, they set up 100 or so very comfortable lawn chairs with arm rests and drink holders. It looks horrible, but you could sit there for hours and hours and be happy. The Moontower shows at the ND make the place look absolutely fantastic, but at the cost of that shabby, Austiny backyard comfort. All of this is to say, the chairs at last night's She Bang show made my ass hurt. But! What a wonderful show! You could tell the festival was excited for this one because the organizers were there watching and talking to the comics after the show.
