On Tuesday night at The Mansion, Queen’s students Esther Oziel and Quinn Bernholtz hosted a fundraising event, “Tuesday Night Live,” for Queen’s Hillel On One Foot to raise funds for the club’s student programming next year.
The low-lit, intimate room at The Mansion created a relaxing environment for audience members to de-stress and enjoy themselves — Oziel’s ultimate goal for the evening. In true Saturday Night Live! style, the event provided comedy and musical entertainment, featuring stand-up comedian Solomon Segal, ArtSci ‘19, and singer performers Adam Eisen, Eng ‘18, and Erez Zobary, Con-Ed ‘18.
Segal, who debuted his stand-up comedy routine at a Golden Words comedy night last March, kicked off the night with a hilariously sweeping monologue. Pop culture references and a solid dosage of millennial humour dominated his set, including bits about Tinder, drugs and Michael Jackson’s “crotch grab” dance move.
Segal demonstrated his comedic style, a successful blend of endearing, self-deprecating skits and raunchy humour, with an opening of two jokes, “one for Jews and one for non-Jews.”
Just as some audience members struggled to understand his first joke — a seemingly innocent comparison of certain Jewish practices to basketball — Segal surprised and delighted them with his second joke (for non-Jews) about the issue of having too much foreskin.
Having won over the audience, Segal moved onto a bit about classical music, using witty logic to try and prove his musical competence was superior to Beethoven’s. The playful take revealed Segal’s incredible chemistry with the audience.
If you’re able to successfully persuade a room full of university students to scream that Beethoven and Mozart are “little b— boys” at the top of their lungs, you’ve pretty much securely tied down a strong stage presence.
Next up on Segal’s set was a satire about the millennial generation’s apparent comfort with drug use. After declaring he was unashamed of smoking weed (unless his parents were listening), Segal used terms from the beloved Bop-It game to poke fun at the often overly elaborate stories and dialect used by stereotypical stoners.
He finished off his set with an amusing critique of the Tinder “Superlike,” making an analogy to insane stalkers who follow their dates home after dinner and spy on them through the window.
After Segal set up an enjoyable atmosphere, performers Zobary and Eisen took over the stage. Their love of performing, complemented by Zobary’s strong vocals and Eisen’s lively guitar-playing and kick-drumming, instantly engaged the audience.
Their set contained 11 songs, including an encore, which ranged in impressive covers from Childish Gambino’s “Redbone” and Taylor Swift’s “Style” to older pieces like Stevie Wonder’s “Superstition.”
Eisen and Zobary’s style was reminiscent of soul singers like Adele and Amy Winehouse. On top of this, they provided a fast tempo and strong beat, which had the audience dancing and singing along.
The singers’ most impressive piece of the night was their original song ‘Jupiter Time.’ Available on Spotify, Zobary’s creative lyrics and unique melody described feelings of isolation from earth, encapsulated in the especially haunting line, “it’s 3 a.m. on Jupiter time.”
The combination of Segal’s clever stand-up comedy and Eisen and Zobary’s lively performance made for a light-hearted evening, the infectious laughter and dance inspired a rewarding break for students deep in midterm season.
Tags
comedy, Singer Songwriter, The Mansion
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