MR Fest Comedians Pack the House at Vodka Street

By Shannon Davies
MR Fest Press Team

Comedy at Vodka Street during MR Fest. I wasn’t really sure what to expect out of this. This is my first year at MR Fest and first time listening to a line-up of just comedians. I saw comedians of all shapes and sizes, literally. They all brought different jokes from their very strange and funny lives. The laughs started at 5:30 p.m. and were slow at first. It makes total sense because the first few people here were just the volunteers and the bartender. The openers, well, are the openers for a reason. During my research, some comedians were harder to find than others. Not saying they are necessarily bad, they are just warming up the crowd with their hit-and-sometime miss jokes. As the line-up worked its way to the headliners, the crowd trickled in and became rather large. The venue, Vodka Street, is rather large so there were plenty places to sit. At some points during the show, most of the chairs were taken. That was surprising to see. Like I said, wasn’t sure what to expect –forgive me.

From what I could tell about the crowd, the funniest comedian was Patrick Sirois. Patrick makes up half of the duo that is Vanilla Presley. He opened with just giving away the free water meant for the performers. Right away, he was a crowd favorite. What set Patrick apart from the other comedians was his character. I found him very engaging. He was very loud, kind of sweaty and was always moving in some sort of fashion. The joke about his boss scaring people was hilarious. I think the crowd would agree with me when I say to definitely check his work out online or even catching a show he is performing at.

Another comedian to check out would be Megan Simon. She actually told her jokes in song form. I don’t know about other people but I can’t think of many of other comedians that can write their jokes that way.

As the day laughed itself into the night, the crowd stayed strong. The laughs becoming louder and more whole-hearted. It was great hearing these jokes and people enjoy them. Comedy is wonderful when most of the audience can laugh with these people that are able to take what they see and make it relatable. My experience from all of this is: if MR Fest comedy can be rated a solid eight out of ten, then the music has to be just as great. Do yourself the favor and check it all out next year.