Laughter returns to the campaign trail with Brave New Workshop’s ‘Two Old Men’

Sketch comedy has been Brave New Workshop’s modus operandi ever since it launched its first revue in a little Northeast Minneapolis coffeehouse in 1961. So its presidential election show was a quadrennial tradition from 1964 to 2016, before COVID scuttled it in 2020. But Brave New Workshop is tapping into the current electoral zeitgeist again with “No Country for Two Old Men.

” And, seeing as thinking on your feet is an essential part of the troupe’s improvisational training, it’s appropriate that the past month’s events have forced the team of writer/performers to revise and revise again. For example, that title may have seemed obsolete when President Joe Biden dropped his re-election bid. But it works in the context of the opening song, a recap of the campaign thus far that allows audiences to laugh at events that may have seemed too worrisome at the time.

The show is a landslide winner in the political comedy category. “No Country for Two Old Men” is the funniest thing the company’s concocted since before the pandemic, a high-energy collection of skits and songs that tosses caution overboard and could be the ideal antidote for news-infected gloominess. While TV viewers speculate about who’s going to play Minnesota Gov.

Tim Walz on “Saturday Night Live,” it bears remembering that that show was made possible by pioneers like Brave New Workshop and such kindred contemporaries as Chicago’s Second City and Los Angeles’ Groundlings. And please note tha.