Recap Louis CK with Steven Wright, Richard Lewis, and Jake Johannsen at the Chicago Theatre

All five of the Just For Laughs festival’s biggest shows (each of which filled the 3500-capacity Chicago Theatre) had some element of curation integrated into the show’s billing. Eschewing the conventional opener(s)/featured act/headliner structure of most stand-up comedy shows, the Chicago Theatre incorporated the headliner(s) into the entire evenings’ proceedings, splitting the difference between talent and talent buyer.

Louis CK’s approach to the curatorial theme was to book (and keep secret) three comics who had influenced his work during the early stages of his career. This made for an evening that was engaging on both a comedic and an anthropological level. CK assembled three survivors of the 1980s stand-up comedy boom, all of whom are still working, performing in clubs, auditoriums, and theaters worldwide.

As the night went on, each comic’s influence on Louis CK’s style emerged: Jake Johannsen’s populist observational humor, Richard Lewis’ relentless self-hatred, and Steven Wright’s incredible grasp of language all shine through in CK’s performances.

A few minutes after a commercial for The Big Bang Theory was projected on screens on either side of the theatre, Louis CK walked onstage unannounced and began the show. This moment of modesty and surprise embodies his bare bones aesthetic: from his wardrobe of exclusively plain black T-shirts to his pitch black take on slice-of-life observations, he is a singular personality that has managed to carve out his own niche.

CK has transcended tags of “alternative” or “mainstream” comedy, uniting fans of cringe-humor based stand-up (CK is a regular guest on Opie And Anthony) and the snobbiest of comedy geeks (he’s also been featured on The Sound Of Young America, WTF With Marc Maron, and The Best Show On WFMU).

Opening his set with a remark about the mortality of the 3500 fans in the audience (“Statistically speaking, at least one person here will be dead within a week”), CK spent much of his time dissecting the effects of aging and death. While CK has always joked about his physicality, his newest material seems almost entirely devoted to how disgusting the human body is (especially his own), with the most insightful and original bits escalating to Cronenberg-levels of body horror.

After about 20 minutes of opening remarks and new material, CK described how he put together the show. Rather than using the large sum of money given to him by Just For Laughs to book three smaller acts and keep the majority of the cash for himself, he spent nearly all of the budget on his supporting acts. He urged audiences to not spoil the lineup for the late show’s audience (“Stop fucking tweeting!”) before introducing his first guest: ’80s comedy boom elder Jake Johannsen.

Jake Johannsen might not be a household name (most post-show tweets/blurbs/discussions revolved around Lewis and Wright), but he’s spent the last 20-plus years touring the country, playing venues from Los Angeles to Mashantucket, Connecticut. His gritty, whiskey-soaked grumble of a voice and anxious delivery of bits about his personal life and day-to-day observations is like a best-case-scenario version of the classic brick wall comedians popularized in the late-’80s. While the crowd at the Chicago Theatre might not have known Johannsen before, it gave him full attention, because he had the CK seal of approval.



CK took to the stage after Johannsen’s 15 minutes were up, and, before introducing his next guest, waxed poetic about how ducks “only have one hole.” By the end of this brief flight of fancy, the audience empathized with an unfaithful drake who had broken after enduring 40 duck years of devotion. CK then cut to the chase, bringing out the next guest and describing his respect for the man, even though they had never actually met before. The cheers of recognition and surprise when CK introduced Richard Lewis were unreal. Grown men were shouting uncontrollably, genuinely thrilled that such a legendary comic would appear onstage unannounced.

Lewis walked onstage and launched into a set that seemed to have begun hours before he even got to the theater, and would go on long after he walks offstage. He simply externalized his internal monologue, a rambling, hilarious collection of self-deprecating thoughts, detours, and tangents. Lewis rarely elicited huge, united laughs from the crowd, he was moving too quickly for that. There was instead a continuous rumble of scattered laughter throughout the entire auditorium, with different people laughing at different quips they managed to catch before Lewis moved on. If a standard stand-up set was described as a CTA train line with a set destination and several stops along the way, Lewis’ performance was a fiery 50-car pileup on Lakeshore Drive.



Lewis rushed offstage once his set ended, shaking hands with CK. (“That’s the extent of our interaction, what you just saw right there.”) After a few minutes of banter, CK introduced his next guest, to the delight of the audience; after the surprise of Richard Lewis, the final guest would have to be someone seriously great. CK described the last comic for the evening as one of his favorites, someone who, in his instantly recognizable monotone, gave him a brief pep talk after an unsuccessful set early in his career. Assuring the audience that he was “just as funny now as he’s ever been,” CK brought out Steven Wright.

Steven Wright is one of the most influential comics alive. His deadpan delivery of bizarre, contrived one-liners was a precursor to this generation’s alt comedy superstars like Demetri Martin and the late Mitch Hedberg. While his droning, low-key style is essentially the exact opposite of Richard Lewis’, their sets resulted in similar smears of constant laughter throughout the theater. Wright was relentlessly funny, compiling one-liners, puns, and batshit crazy theoretical scenarios into a singular performance, cramming approximately 500 jokes into 20 minutes.



Few comedians would be interested in following such an overwhelmingly successful set, but Louis CK did not appear the least bit intimidated. Remarking about Wright, “He’s like a poet, that’s what poets would do today,” it was clear CK admired Wright but was wholly confident in his own abilities as a headliner. His peerless comic ability is elevated by his strict work ethic. For the last five or so years, CK has worked out an hour’s worth of material, toured behind it, recorded it, and then threw it all away. Once a year, he releases the performance on DVD (2010’s Hilarious, most recently) and begins work on new material. This is a difficult exercise for any comic, but it forces a perfectionist like CK to be at work constantly, shaping and forming his sets to live up to the standard set by his previous hours.

To go on at length about the 40-minute set he delivered to close out the evening would be unfair to future audiences. In short: It’s great; Louis CK is regarded by his peers as one of the greatest comics for good reason. Delving deeper into the body horror themes of his opening set, CK conjured some seriously disturbing imagery throughout the set, before throwing the entire male population of Earth under the bus in a closing bit about how terrible all men are at sex. While some concepts (like that one) have been mined to death, CK manages to run it through his misanthropic, self-loathing filter and deliver observations that make even the most tired concepts seem fresh.



It wouldn’t necessarily be fair to describe Just For Laughs Chicago as a comedy version of the titanic music festivals like Lollapalooza or Coachella, which have dominated the summer schedules of indie rock bands and Urban Outfitters shoppers in recent years. A closer analogue would be to the All Tomorrow’s Parties festival that organizes events throughout Europe and North America. ATP often co-produces its shows with a band or famous personality like The Flaming Lips or Jim Jarmusch on board to help sculpt the lineup.

Just For Laughs’ straight-out-of-Idiocracy full name (anyone for a Twix bar?) and occasionally irritating branding practices obscure a five-day-long celebration of live comedy in all its forms, allowing some of the genre’s biggest stars to play a role in the creation of a show that could be, like Louis CK’s, an intensely personal and memorable performance.