David Wain
Deliberately bad magic and deadpan keyboard vamps from a sketch legend.
1 special · 2004
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Watching David Wain perform live feels like attending a talent show where the host is entirely too confident in his own hobbies. He will sit at a keyboard to vamp through a half-finished song, perform a deliberately underwhelming magic trick, or explain a premise until the audience’s patience becomes the joke. He operates with a rigid posture, delivering absurdities in the cadence of a man giving a corporate presentation. He commits to a dumb bit like a weird accent or a prop that barely works until the repetition forces the crowd to give in.
Specials
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Comedy Central Presents: Stella with Michael Ian Black & Michael Showalter
Three men in matching suits perform highly synchronized nonsense.
Comedy Central · 21 min
On stage
For fans who grew up watching MTV’s The State or quoting Wet Hot American Summer, Wain is one of the main reasons modern comedy looks the way it does. He doesn’t use the stage to polish a tight hour for television. He drops into theaters and festivals, often flanked by famous friends, to do exactly what amuses him. That might mean playing drums and singing classic rock covers in the Middle Aged Dad Jam Band alongside Ken Marino.
The throughline in his live appearances, stretching back to the Fez nightclub runs of Stella in the late nineties, is an affection for the dumbest parts of show business. He loves the tropes: the cheesy transition, the dramatic freeze-frame, the undeserved swagger of a hacky lounge singer. He will pause a routine to acknowledge how cheap the punchline he just delivered was, then deliver another one exactly like it. He isn’t trying to convince anyone he is a traditional standup. He just wants to wear a nice suit, play a few chords, and see how long you will listen.
At a glance
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