Good spirits

Nine years in bar-and-club time is like 90 human years. Most performance nights never see their first anniversary, which makes the Spirits Open Mic the gap-toothed but sprightly old geezer who's still out there running marathons. At the ninth anniversary show last Wednesday, host Jo-Anna Downey rounded out the age range in the audience on both ends of the scale, with her toddler niece and her mother in attendance for a special show filled with top headlining comics both on- and off-stage.

"There were younger comics coming up to me who didn't know it was an anniversary," says Downey, "and they were like, 'I would love to get on this show!'" Good luck, honey. From Downey's own off-the-cuff observational humour and Bob Kerr's tales of being outsmarted by the homeless to Debra DiGiovanni's riff on why Italian women can't wear lipstick, the show was filled with veterans bringing their A material. Kristeen von Hagen busted out a vintage bit about two-in-one shampoo/conditioners whose datedness became part of the joke. It worked so well that if open-mic nights were TV stations, executives would be pitching Spirits Open Mic Classic as a new digital subscription channel.

After nine years, people watching now bring expectations. "The audience has been coming for so long, and a lot of them have opinions about certain comics, so there's pressure as a comic to do my show." Six months ago Downey launched another comedy night at the Eton House with what she calls a "rawer, edgier" vibe from the audience. At Spirits, Downey has all the edgy material she can handle in the form of Boyd Banks. Closing the show with scalding attacks on sacred institutions like the Pope and Terry Fox, he found an unexpected fan in Downey's mother. Downey says, "Someone said to me that the weirdest part of the show wasn't watching Boyd; it was watching your mom watching Boyd." DAVE MORRIS