Brian Regan (l) and Paul Mecurio in the basement of the Scottish Rite Theater in Collingswood, NJ.
We’ve passed by the hulking building literally thousands of times while going about our daily lives. The former Scottish Rite Cathedral on White Horse Pike, in the formerly sleepy (but now trendy) borough of Collingswood, is just a bit more than a mile from our front door. When we accidentally found out that Brian Regan was to perform there on Dec. 2 (our eighteenth wedding anniversary!), and when we realized it coincided with a night off, we contacted FOS/Columnist Tom Ryan and asked if he could hook us up with tix and VIP passes.
Ryan has opened for Regan on a few occasions. He happily made inquiries and last night we found ourselves in the third row of the 73-year-old theater, uncomfortably close to the stage (uncomfortable for comedians, that is!). We surmised that we were in what was probably the orchestra pit in the venue’s previous life.
Mecurio opened and did 20, going into the crowd with zeal and pumping up the capacity crowd of 1,050. The room is large, richly appointed and boxy, with a high, ornate ceiling inlaid with stained glass. The stage is huge, the sound was excellent and the fans ranged in age from 10 to 70. To our left sat erstwhile Helium manager Ben Maher with BtB Julie.
Mecurio aggressively works the audience (literally going into the crowd!), mildly panicking the Female Half of the Staff! Just prior to the beginning of the show, The Male Half of the Staff ducked out for a bathroom break, failing to return to his seat in time for the start of the opener’s set. Mecurio, spotting TMHotS trying to re-seat himself without disrupting the show, began to riff on TMHotS’s glasses, but ceased the assault when he recognized him! (“Hey, I like those ironic frames… Oh! It’s Brian!”) Crisis averted!
Regan did an hour. All killer, no filler. The audience wasn’t about to let him get off with just sixty minutes, so he came out and encored for another 20, taking “requests” for old bits.
Afterward, a knot of people, including Electric Factory Concerts personnel, Regan and Mecurio, tour manager Matt Komen (The Biz) and Both Halves of the SHECKYmagazine Staff, gathered at the Bishop’s Collar at 24th & Fairmount, across the river in PHL. (The intersection sounded familiar to TMHotS and for good reason– in a previous life, the Bishop’s Collar, which is now a cool, chic and trendy boite with microbrews on tap and hi-def TV’s, was a dive by the name of 99 West that offered a peanut-shell-strewn floor, a pool table in the rear and a management team that didn’t care if the smoke that wafted from the back was… pungent. (Those qualities made it The Official Bar of the Temple University News back in 1978 or so, which is why at least the adress, if not the ambience, was familiar to TMHotS!)
Regan is confident onstage and off. It is quite a spectacle to see 1,050 pumped, mostly young, Regan fans fill up this theater on a crisp December evening. Young, old, in-between; couples, couples with a teen or two in tow; clots of couples excitedly reciting Regan bits as they ascend the stairs to the showroom. Not much attitude or posturing, a lot of energy. The fans reflect the man– not much attitude or posturing and boundless energy. He is a draw by virtue of his multiple Letterman appearances. He can regularly fill theaters like this one (and larger ones) because of a method and a work ethic that produces fresh material (of equal or higher quality than than that which it replaces) on a scarily regular basis.
His modesty is genuine. His befuddlement universal. He has hit upon a way to wring tears of laughter from the most mundane subjects and has also figured out how to economically work string theory or show horses into short, sharp chunks of hysterical material. While the MSM and the alt-weeklies struggle mightily to turn “Observational Humor” into a pejorative term, Regan has quietly restored it to an artform and amassed legions of fans in the process.