Esther's Follies
A window to the heart of Sixth Street and utterly complacent comedy
Esther's Follie's cast member Shannon Sedwick
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Like it or not, tourist attractions are part of this city, too. But do they deserve the bad rap they get from grizzled locals? In Tourist Trap, Decider takes an ongoing, objective look at the cold, hard facts of establishments that largely exist to draw in transients. In this edition, we sit in on the vaudevillian antics of Sixth Street comedy institution Esther's Follies.
Fodor's says: "There's really one place in downtown Austin known for its rip-roaring comedy shows. Esther's has kept Austin rolling with laughter for more than 25 years. Situated in the heart of the entertaining Sixth Street District, it's the perfect place to take in an evening of satire and parody."
Decider says: The regular performers at The Hideout Theatre and The Velveeta Room might take umbrage with Fodor's assessment, but it's true that when Esther's Pool opened in 1977, it was downtown's only comedy destination. Even as the whole of east Sixth Street became a place to get a laugh at the expense of others (something Esther's gleefully exploits with its backstage window to all the debauched revelry), the theater and its vaudeville-inspired revues have retained their singularity and profitability, regularly packing the house at $20 per ticket. More than anything, Esther's Follies survives on enthusiasm, an earnest "let's put on a show" spirit that makes the broad humor of its revues hard to hate, even after the second punchline about sagging pants. (At one point in "Financial Planner," one of several just-short-of-topical sketches rotating in and out of the current show, cast member Shaun Wainwright-Branigan actually says, "The big, baggy hip-hop pants the kids are so fond of." Please note that Branigan plays the sketch's harried titular character, and not a crotchety oldster that would conceivably end a sentence with the phrase "…the kids are so fond of.")
"Camp" and "bawdiness" are the watchwords for Esther's Follies, applying not only to the sketches and song parodies—like "Red State Woman," a riff on Gretchen Wilson's "Redneck Woman" that's less a parody and more an exaggeration of the original's proud ignorance—but also to magician Ray Anderson, whose razor-sharp tongue may be more deadly than the sword he appears to fall on in his "Cane/Impale" illusion. The most likely of the Esther's bunch to win the "Oh no, performer coming into the audience" award, Anderson treats his volunteers with kid gloves, saving the truly barbed stuff for the unfortunate souls who manage to catch his attention through the backstage window. (Anderson, on a man passing in a motorized wheelchair: "Too easy.") That window is a versatile tool, one which gives the stage some extra depth—whether it's providing a ledge for a suicidal stock broker to jump from or lending a "via satellite" effect to a sketch about "Austin wildlife"—and it injects some spontaneity into the proceedings, thanks to drunken assholes who think they're the first person to interact with the cast through the window. Ironically, they'll never be as funny as the passersby who don't realize they can be seen, like the oblivious brahs who temporarily halt their trek to The Thirsty Nickel to stare at Ellana Kelter's leotard-clad ass.
Tourist trap? The window certainly is (literally), and because it's engineered for maximum mass appeal, so is the show. It's unfortunate, but Esther's Follies exists in the same time warp that produces the world's mom-forwarded e-mail jokes. (Where else would Barack Obama making a Snakes On A Plane joke be considered "topical satire?") Anderson's tricks and the cast's energy make you want to root for the performers, but the material is a testament to that most Austin of institutions: the velvet rut.
