Radio show hits the Arden stage

There’s something electric about being part of live radio recording of The Irrelevant Show, a buffet of award-winning comedy sketches and songs. Maybe it’s the perfectly timed punch lines, or the unexpected and often hilarious bloopers.

Back for a full third season on CBC Radio One, The Irrelevant Show is conducting its last live taping for this juncture at the Arden Theatre on Friday. Two 45-minute sets are planned, which will be edited into two 26-minute episodes.

The funny men blasting through the scripts are Edmonton’s hammiest actors and comics: Mark Meer, Donovan Workun, Jana O’Connor, Marianne Copithorne and Neil Grahn.

The show, much like producer Peter Brown’s spry mind, jumps all over the place and stretches across the comedy map from daily life situations to the ultra bizarre.

“In the early days it was about pop culture, TV and the Internet. Now it’s more about different real life situations, which really resonate well with the audience,” says Brown.

The son of academics, he took post secondary at Saskatoon’s University of Saskatchewan before pursuing a masters in English at Cambridge University. But the opportunity to work on some TV shows and do comedy lured him back to Canada.

He became a theatre reviewer for CBC in Saskatoon. After a brief stint on Arts Tonight, a Toronto-based radio show, he came to Edmonton as host of the drive-home Radio Active show in 1995 where he left his imprint.

Intellectually restless and curious about the world, Brown returned in 2003 to his comic improv roots by creating The Irrelevant Show with Paul Mather.

“At that time the only comedy on CBC was political. This was a way of doing comedy that wasn’t political. We wanted to do something different other than making jokes about the prime minister.”

Radio is Brown’s calling, a passion that was nurtured as a teenager and was instrumental in creating The Irrelevant Show.

“When you do sketch comedy on TV, you are limited by what you see. But on radio you can be anywhere, anytime. It is in the mind of the listener. TV is passive whereas radio is active and exists in the imagination.”

In addition to producing the show, Brown works with Grahn to write and punch up the scripts.

“The sketches are scripted, developed and reworked and then the audience lets us know what they like. The audience decides what is kept and what is assigned to the dustbin.”

Brown is also bringing in Sheldon Elter and Ryan Parker of the wacky cult band, the Be Arthurs to sing The Hockey Song. The duo also takes part in three sketches: one crams 11 guys into a car; the second celebrates the pop culture wingman; and the third routine is a tongue-in-cheek diatribe on “life is awesome.”

Ending with a chuckle, Brown closes by saying, “This is your last chance this season to see some of the best Canadian performers delivering smart, funny material and turning on each other when it goes wrong.”