Complicated Apes

Bryan Callen brings a hyper-physical, highly animated stage presence to Chicago’s historic Thalia Hall, building his set around a plea to stop treating human beings as fixed nouns and start viewing them as verbs. The material filters modern cultural anxieties through the lens of evolutionary biology, arguing that tribal instincts are getting the best of us in the internet era.

In 2019, Callen was juggling a mainstream television run as Coach Mellor on ABC’s The Goldbergs and its spinoff Schooled with his work on the popular podcast The Fighter & The Kid. That split career (network-safe sitcom work on one side, loose podcast banter on the other) informs the tone of the hour. He shifts constantly from broad slapstick to pseudo-intellectual observations about primate ancestors.

Specific bits focus on his own physical shortcomings, contrasting his Italian-Irish peasant genetics and short femurs with his wife’s Viking ancestry. He also delivers an extended riff on why the women of the UFC should be the ultimate symbols of modern feminism, alongside a brief, bizarre evaluation of the surprisingly great posture of racists.

Directed by Brian Volk-Weiss and released by Comedy Dynamics, the performance leans on theatrical clowning rather than ideological combat.