Days and nights at the Second City : a memoir, with Notes on staging review theatre /

Name a prominent comic actor of the last 40 years, and you will very likely name someone connected to the Second City. As the company's cofounder, longtime producer, and one of the few who remained with the Second City through the '60s and '70s, Sahlins saw it become a veritable comedy factory. In this slim volume, Sahlins reminisces about his rash decision to sell a small tape recorder company to start the Second City, the years of struggling to keep it afloat, and its eventual triumph as it gained national attention, thanks largely to the Saturday Night Live contingent of Second City alums: Gilda Radner, Dan Aykroyd, Bill Murray, and John Belushi. Memoirs are subjective and idiosyncratic by nature, and Sahlins' isn't so much a history of the Second City as it is a handful of funny stories, spiced by firmly held opinions on theater, comedy, and the place of improvisational comedy in theater, and rounded off with notes on how to put together a Second City^-style comedy revue. --Jack Helbig

John Belushi, Mike Meyers, Gilda Radner, Bill Murray, Mike Nichols and John Candy are just a few of the numerous comedy greats associated with famed Chicago comedy review Second City. In Days and Nights at the Second City: A Memoir, with Notes on Staging Review Theatre, Second City founder and longtime producer and director Bernard Sahlins (editor, Plays for Performance series) tells the story of this influential cultural institution, from its beginnings in 1959. Sahlins's comic sensibility isn't obvious in this mostly rather earnest book, which contains statements like "Man is the only animal that laughs, and comedy's major role is to evoke the laughter that celebrates our unity as mortal creatures." Still, for anyone curious about the history of contemporary American comedy, this book contains plenty of important background. 18 b&w photos. ( May 25) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

Sahlins, one of three founders (in 1959) of the famed Chicago comedy sketch theater The Second City, doesn't profess to have written a complete history; the memoir half of this book stops in 1985. Still, his brief account of the evolution of an institution has charm and wisdom. Those in and around the comedy troupe were political liberals, but they recognized "that the proper target of a satirist is himself and members of his own class." Sahlins recounts how youth culture a subculture through much of the Sixties eventually became the popular culture and helped draw The Second City toward mainstream success. He also offers brief accounts of noted troupe alumni like John Belushi. The book's second half contains extensive directors' notes: on the characteristics of various types of scenes (blackout, parody, etc.), how to best use minimal props and costumes, how to sequence a show, how to open a scene, and how to fix acting mistakes. Sahlins abhors the "bad boy" over-the-top comedy of Saturday Night Live; he wants his actors to "play to the limits of your skill and intelligence." While this book is neither a full history nor a full training manual, the half-loaves are well baked. For strong performing arts collections. Norman Oder, "Library Journal" (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.