Review – Pat Burtscher’s Breaking Even

To Pat Burtscher the world is like a game of Monopoly that’s been going on for 5000 years, and he thinks it’s time we redistribute the property and start over — “it’s okay, rich people, you can be the hat again”. Breaking Even is about the reality of working in comedy, the reality being that the pay sucks and half the time you end up putting in more money than you get out. He’s obviously been thinking about the topic for a while, because his observations are succinct and hilarious — “I look around my house and it’s like a museum of debt.”

Pat is a talented comedian: his improvisation is inventive and refined, and he writes clever observational humour. But he cultivates a sardonic, disengaged style which can be difficult for the audience to connect with and sometimes steals the punch from his jokes. It can be refreshing just to see him break out of it, which he usually only does when he’s putting down a heckler. Which itself is something to see, he’s scathingly funny when he’s explaining to an audience member exactly why their participation is unhelpful. He even ejected a reviewer once (not this one) for yelling-out during his show.

Breaking Even has all the elements of successful comedy — Pat is confident on stage and his material is both funny and original, but I think he would get more laughs with a more approachable character.