The Sklar Brothers – Hendersons and Daughters

Hendersons and Daughters
The Sklar Brothers
Stand-up Comedy CD or download
Stand Up! Records 2011

There have been many great duos in comedy history. Groups like Abbot and Costello, the Smothers Brothers, and Martin and Lewis were wildly successful.  However, the comedy world hasn’t seen a notable pair of funnymen working together on stage since Cheech and Chong.  In today’s stand-up comedy circuit, the Sklar Brothers are a rare breed trying to survive as a team, though what they do pales in comparison to most of their predecessors.

When listening to most of The Hendersons and Daughters, The Sklar Brothers’ 2011 comedy CD, one will wonder why two people are even on stage.  They usually just tell jokes in the same sort of delivery as a typical stand-up, but they will interchange between sentences or parts of a story.  These jokes are alright, but when you’ve got two heads working as one to deliver them, they’re essentially killing one bird with two stones.  Groups like Abbot and Costello and Martin and Lewis didn’t merely tell jokes, they communicated with each other.  They took advantage of having a completely different person on stage to bounce off of.  Who’s on First simply doesn’t work as a monologue.  The Sklar Brothers are just twins trying to share the stage and material.

Stand Up! Records CD Page

One also occasionally chimes in while the other is talking with a short quip that essentially repeats whatever the other just said.  These interjections rarely add anything to the bit.  However, when they actually DO interact with each other in dialogue, they are usually pretty funny.  Tracks like As Nature Made Him and Fairy Tales show how dynamic The Sklar Brothers can be, but they don’t incorporate this tactic nearly enough.

This comedy CD is worth a few laughs, but until Randy and Jason Sklar fully utilize the potential of having multiple heads on stage, they aren’t going to be worth much more than that.

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