It’s happened to most of us international students, right? Your dutch friend is talking about this great show they went to, this brilliant performer they saw, and oh, if only they could have taken you along… except you don’t speak the language. Maybe you gave up trying to find some good -and affordable- English-language entertainment after the twenty-third google search, but for those still holding out hope so late in the year, one UvA student group was proud to present its first Stand Up Comedy Night on Thursday at the Boom Chicago bar. But was it worth the 8 euro ticket?
Most people -at least most people interested in stand-up comedy- can agree: negative, brutally honest reviews are usually far more amusing to read (and write). It would, then, be easy to say that the one-liners were about as well-timed as two consecutive seminars on opposite sides of campus, that the material was as dry as the uncooked ramen most of us stock up on before exam week, and that the desperate attempts at relatability were almost as painfully transparent as the ones in this review. But, as you may have guessed already, this would not be true in the slightest.
In fact, the show met and surpassed all our expectations. Each of the performers brought their unique styles together to create a wonderful night, and leave the entire audience laughing and cheering. The comedians’ varied and diverse backgrounds gave the entire night an excellent flow and ensured that there was something to cater to everyone’s taste. Each set was bursting with either blink-and-you’ll-miss-them quips to snappy one-liners, bizarre anecdotes and enough social satire to fuel four anthropology papers, two cultural analysis articles, and at least one dubiously ethical psychology research project.
If you missed this show don’t despair, the comedyundergradz (who you can find on Instagram under this username) have at least one more show planned this month, with hopefully more to come. And for those of you who don’t trust the objectivity of some strangers on the internet writing about shows that give free tickets out to reviewers, much of the material presented is available on youtube with a quick search of “UvA comedy nights”.