MANSFIELD — A couple of Saturdays ago I decided to pay a visit to Sons of Italy, a downtown drinking hangout on 3rd Street just east of Bowman.
Local comic and all-round nice guy Derek Dawson was hosting one of his open mic nights, and since I’d never been to Sons of Italy before I figured this would be a good excuse to drop in.
I won’t say it was the funniest night of comedy I’ve seen. Open mics rarely are. It was, however, one of the most challenging to the performers that I’ve yet witnessed.
With no cover charge, $2 beers and Ohio State vs. Wisconsin playing on the TV, there were other reasons to be there, and the dozen or so drinkers lined up at the bar did not seem especially concerned that a night of comedy had begun around them.
“Can we at least turn the sound down?” Derek pleaded, as he opened the show with a few gags of his own to ease us in.
The first contestant up to the mic was a stocky guy in a ballcap called Eddy. Aspiring comedians will travel surprising distances for a sparsely-attended try-out, but I suspect Eddy had made a journey of about two feet from his regular bar stool to recite from the same repertoire of schoolyard vulgarities he uses at every opportunity.
Some gags are so funny you’re still laughing at them two jokes down the line. Some of Eddy’s were so unfunny I was still not laughing at them half an hour later. That’s if the punchline could actually be identified, which was hit-and-miss at best.
To be fair, it would take a comedic genius to extract belly laughs from a crowd that small, half of whom were intently watching a football game and commenting loudly on the action.
To add to the discomfort, the Sons of Italy can possibly lay claim to being the Brightest Bar in Mansfield, maybe the brightest room of any kind. There was no hiding under the surgical-strength white lights which illuminated the anti-climatic tableau of each failed joke with clinical precision.
The room itself is not large and about half of it is taken up with a pool table and a row of arcade games, although it isn’t clear if the games are for the use of the customers or just being stored there. Only one of them appeared to be plugged in, and that was one too many as it cycled through its musical dirge with annoying volume during the many pockets of awkward silence.
I considered unplugging it myself but that would have meant crawling around on my knees. I decided against it.
Not long into the first act Derek made a shocking announcement from the sidelines. Since only three try-outs had shown up, each performer would have to keep going for 40 minutes to fill out the time.
I could scarcely believe what I was hearing. I’ve seen literally hundreds of live comedy shows over the last 30 years, from large arenas to cramped back rooms in pubs but I have never seen try-outs with 5 minutes of prepared material asked to extend their set – with no prior warning – to headliner length.
This resulted in moments of Dadaist surrealism as each performance was filled with long pauses and bizarre non-sequiturs worthy of Waiting For Godot.
Somehow both Eddy and the audience made it to the end of the first act. Next up was a confident-looking guy in his mid-20s called John, who with some reluctance pulled himself away from the game and announced that he would be improvising rather than working from prepared material.
Having said that, he opened with an Irish joke about Seamus the Handyman that was so old I remember hearing it before he was born — except the punchline of the version I heard involved a sheep rather than a goat.
John worked the room with banter and proved himself a quick wit. He shot a couple of questions my way but ultimately went easy on me. I was grateful. He could have gone in harder. I still wince at the memory of a packed comedy show in Columbus when I inadvertently sat in the front row and was referred to all night by the comedians as “The Professor.”
Someone at the rear of the room was actually wearing a tie, which in a bar these days might as well be a top hat and tails.
“Hey you – why are you all dressed up?” yelled John.
“I’ve been to my stepfather’s funeral,” the man replied forcefully. “Got something to say about that?”
“Nope,” said John. “I’m not stupid. You’re twice the size of me. I don’t like getting beat up in parking lots.”
At this point the lone bartender, Rochelle, made a move for the back room.
“She’s going, look,” said John. “Everyone steal the liquor. Hey wait – does this DJ machine work?”
DJ machine? I wasn’t sure if this terminology was an odd quirk of his or if this is what young people now call jukeboxes.
“Do you mean the jukebox?” asked Rochelle.
“Yeah whatever,” John replied, “if you want to get technical on me. What is this, the 1950s? Is Fonzie gonna come in to slap it and play us all a tune?”
In this fashion, John worked his way through his set without squandering any actual material – not as easy as it looks.
The final slot was taken by Alex, the most experienced act of the evening who had traveled down from Kent to take part in the proceedings. Kent, Ohio, that is. I clarify this because I am from Kent in England, a somewhat odd coincidence that was picked up on by a couple of the performers.
The comic mileage in this coincidence is as limited as you might imagine. But to be fair, there was a lot of time to fill.
Alex was a very likable performer with an easy storytelling style and some good gags up his sleeve, enough to make him the evening’s winner in my unofficial opinion. But even so, he probably only had about 15 minutes of actual material, which he quite reasonably would have assumed to be more than adequate for an open mic.
When this time slot was more than doubled it allowed for all sorts of questions, comments and interruptions. For example, a lady at the bar wanted Alex to clarify a technical detail of a joke about a pornographic movie, and Alex was more than happy to oblige. Ah, we thought! So that’s why they shave…
As the night drew to a close, I remembered something Derek had said to me about performing at an open mic: that you have to mentally get yourself in a position where you don’t care if you fail.
It occurred to me that this is something the audience needs to do, too. Like many things in life, if you keep an open mind you’ll find the experience fascinating.
Keep an eye on https://www.facebook.com/Mansfield-Ohio- Comedy-1527540917545140/ for upcoming open mics and other local comedy events.
