Bo Burnham brought his unique brand of comedy to Shannon Hall Thursday night, displaying new material to an enthusiastic audience and showcasing improvisational skills rarely seen in his online productions.
Categorizing Bo Burnham as a stand-up comic doesn’t exactly do justice to his style of performance. This is best illustrated by the fact that Burnham is most well-known for his musical compositions, the likes of which first garnered him attention on YouTube while the comic was still in high school. Songs such as “New Math,” “High School Party” and “Love is …” found an audience in teenagers who weren’t used to experiencing comedy coming from a member of their own generation. They combined profanity and wit in a way that perfectly suited younger audiences and created fans of stand-up who wouldn’t have found access to the medium otherwise. Some songs even present serious political arguments through the veil of comedy.
Burnham opened his show at Shannon Hall with a song about the struggles of being a straight, white man. Later, he would perform “From God’s Perspective,” describing how God has given up on the human race and how the books they believe to be the Almighty’s teachings are “way too thick.”
But Burnham’s songs on the piano are only one aspect of an act that could be considered his own version of a variety show. Many jokes are presented through the comedian’s interaction with omniscient voices and music tracks. At one point, Burnham acted out what it was like to make a PB&J while high. He imitated the process as if it was the equivalent of diffusing a bomb while his physical movements were accompanied with music that would suit the final round of “Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?” Burnham followed this by impersonating what the same process would be like when drunk. In this case an offstage voice was used to portray a wife who comes home to find her husband sticking his hand into a jar of mayonnaise, which he thinks is peanut butter. She then proceeds to scold him over his drinking habits, while Burnham’s drunken persona forces the audience to take his side in the argument. The bit concluded when the wife asks him who he is talking to. Burnham declared that at this point the joke had become “too meta,” quickly moving onto the next bit. This is just one example of how Burnham manipulated theatrical elements in a way that separates him from his comedic contemporaries and made his act incredibly hard to categorize.
Despite these theatrics, the defining aspect of Burnham’s live show was arguably his audience interactions. At multiple points during the show he asked for the house lights to be turned on and entered the audience asking questions of whoever happened to catch his eye. Early in the night he asked audience members what they planned on being for Halloween and received the answer “I don’t know” from about five different people. He eventually found a woman who was going as a banana and incorporated her into the act for the rest of night. At one point late in the show, he randomly began to stare in the direction of the woman and seductively proclaimed “I’d love to slip on you while walking down a staircase.” These audience interactions illustrated Burnham’s admirable improvisational abilities that aren’t seen in his specials.
The crowd at Shannon Hall Thursday was clearly full of students who were Burnham fans coming in, which ended up being a double-edged sword for the comedian. They reacted positively to new material and audience interaction. One the other hand, older material fell flat as almost everyone in attendance had already listened to the comedians more popular songs on repeat. This was especially apparent in the encore, as the comedian performed older songs to a lackluster response from an audience that couldn’t be caught off guard by any of the punch lines.
However, Burnham’s set was composed mostly of new material that had his fans leaning into every joke. The show displayed an alternate form of comedy from a multi-talented performer whose mastery of the medium exceeds his years.
