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Brick Wall Comedy
Brick Wall Comedy
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Make Happy

Bo Burnham

Netflix · 2016 · 60 min

An elaborate musical routine about the anxiety of performing.

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Bo Burnham performs on a stage that looks and sounds more like a pop concert than a comedy club, using choreographed lighting rigs, synthesizers, and backing tracks to question whether anyone on either side of the microphone is actually happy. He operates in a space of intense self-consciousness, mocking the very nature of live performance while executing it with theatrical precision. The show shifts from high-concept musical parodies to physical comedy, all built around a central tension between a performer’s desire for applause and his exhaustion with the audience.

Filmed at the Capitol Theatre in Port Chester, New York, and released on Netflix in 2016, the special caught Burnham at a transitional point. He was 25, already a decade into his career after starting as a teenage YouTube sensation, and experiencing severe panic attacks before going on stage. This performance anxiety bleeds directly into the material, particularly during the climatic, eight-minute auto-tuned rant modeled after Kanye West’s concert monologues. Instead of world peace or artistic integrity, Burnham uses the vocoder to cry out about the physical impossibility of fitting his hand inside a Pringles can and the tragedy of a poorly wrapped burrito.

Other segments include a country song that details the cynical marketing formula of modern stadium-country acts, a dramatic pantomime of making a sandwich while high versus while drunk, and a song about the cognitive dissonance of being a straight white male. Critics widely praised the show for its musical variety and its deconstruction of performance, though many noted the underlying melancholy. It marked Burnham’s final traditional stand-up tour before he stepped away from live performing for several years, ending on an intimate, acoustic note in a guest house that would later become the setting for his lockdown project.

The set list

6 bits

  1. Mock improv audience song

    Burnham claims he will improvise a song on the spot, gets an audience member's name ('Rob'), and plays a pre-recorded track with perfectly timed pauses to drop Rob's name into lines about sleeping with his mother.

  2. Country music pandering

    Performs a satirical bro-country song deconstructing how wealthy country artists use buzzwords to pander to rural, working-class audiences.

  3. Lowering romantic expectations

    Sings a song advising listeners to lower their unrealistic standards when looking for love and a romantic partner.

  4. Sandwich-making mimes

    Performs wordless, choreographed physical mimes depicting the struggle of attempting to make sandwiches while high on marijuana and intoxicated.

  5. Kanye West Yeezus-style stage finale

    Emulates Kanye West's concert rants over autotuned music, starting with trivial complaints about Pringles can diameters and overstuffed burritos before transitioning into an honest confession about his stage anxiety and complicated relationship with his audience.

  6. The closer (spoiler). Show it

    Guest house epilogue ('Are You Happy?') closer

    Performs an intimate song at an upright piano in his home's guest house asking the audience the rhetorical question 'Are you happy?', concluding with him stepping outside to greet his girlfriend and dog.

How it plays

Tone
Satirical, avant-garde, dark, introspective, and playful.
On stage
Prickly, meta, self-aware, and self-deprecating; alternates between entertaining the audience, baiting them, and calling out the artificiality of performance.
Pace
Meticulously choreographed, manic, and dynamic; whipsaw shifts between theatrical spectacle, rapid-fire songwriting, and quiet, thoughtful moments.
About
Deconstruction of performance and comedy, Critique of honesty and authenticity tropes in stand-up, Commercialization and pandering in modern music genres, Celebrity culture and audience-performer dynamics, Mental health, stage anxiety, and personal happiness, Social media and performative living

What the critics said

Overwhelmingly positive; critics praised the special's ambitious deconstruction of performance, rapid-fire songwriting, dark tonal depth, and meticulously synchronized production design.

In the room: Rapt and energized, participating in call-and-response bits while taking in Burnham's high-tech, multi-layered theatrical spectacle.

Summed up from reviews, articles and listings. Sources: en.wikipedia.org, imdb.com, rottentomatoes.com, theguardian.com, vulture.com, observer.com.

Backstory

Burnham began experiencing panic attacks before shows while touring for 'what.', leading him to reconsider live performing; the special also reflected on social media culture, the 'Me generation', and the pressure people feel to perform their lives.

Details

Released
Taped
2015, The Capitol Theatre, Port Chester
Runtime
60 min
Where
Netflix
Director
Bo Burnham, Chris Storer
Topics
Before
what. (2013)
After
Inside (2021)

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