'In the Can With Martha Kelly'

Martha Kelly (Courtesy of Brian Birzer)

At first blush, with the static single-camera setup and sparse mise-en-scène à la Animal House's sex room (graffitied walls and grungy hide-a-bed love seat), In the Can With Martha Kelly more closely resembles XTube amateur porn than the chin-wag brethren of Steve Allen or Rona Barrett. But production value be damned, comedian Martha Kelly's fledgling but fabulous online interview series is a bona fide talk show, not to mention a treasure trove of self-doubt, uncomfortable laughs, empathy, and disarmingly candid conversations with touring stand-up headliners. The webisodes are videotaped in one take in the Cap City Comedy Club's greenroom and are not edited, giving In the Can a cinema verité feel further enhanced by the fact that, for the most part, guests are refreshingly not "on." Clearly, there are no preinterviews, and gone is the proclivity to pepper the chat with bits from their routines. The spontaneity is fairly startling. We witness the comedians not as entertainers but as, get this, actual people. For example, the usually übersilly Doug Benson tenderly assures his flustered host that "I think your misgivings are interesting to the viewer." This viewer concurs. Then, the naturally charming and otherwise demure Kelly is not shy about having been to hell and back and forth and back. She'll blurt that she has cognitive blunting from her anti-depressant, was in a "food cult," has body-weight issues, and is a recovering alcoholic. That these things are all true is understood, but that her personal adversity isn't entirely resolved or wielded as pure schtick or whining is rather empowering. Standing at 5 feet 1 inch, Martha Kelly has the fortitude of a 50-foot Queenie.

In contrast to her self-consciousness as an interviewer, Kelly is a confident and accomplished performer who trades in a marvelous pitch-black deadpan. The native Southern Californian has appeared on Comedy Central, Late Night With Conan O'Brien, The Late Late Show With Craig Ferguson, and at the Montreal Just for Laughs Festival and won the national Laff Riots competition in 2002 and the Funniest Person in Austin Contest in 2000. While talking at Cap City on a recent Sunday afternoon, she obliges my request to recite an old joke. "When I first moved to Austin in January of 2000, I went out drinking and smoking every single night for a year. And it was really fun at first, but then I started to feel kind of weird because, before I moved here, I had a vision of myself becoming a new person once I lived in Austin. I just hadn't realized that person might be Nick Nolte." Indeed, partying parlayed into addiction, and though her sole vice was light beer, still – the barley and the damage done, and her budding career was temporarily derailed.

Although Kelly experimented with a live variety show years ago at the Bad Dog Comedy Theater and was more recently invigorated by the JabberTalky night at Ego's (an inspired round-robin talk-show format), the In the Can name and project was the brainchild of Cap City's den mother extraordinaire, Margie Coyle. Kelly explains: "Margie has always given me opportunities in comedy, but I was surprised when she called me. And when she said interview people, I said, 'I'm not that good at that.' And she said, 'We know, and we think it'll be funny that you're awkward.'"

The inaugural live version of the show last April had a few miscues, naturally, but was a hilarious affair that often evoked the classic nightclub entertainment of a bygone era as well as the contagious spirit of the DIY underground. In the Can is co-produced with comedian and recent Minneapolis transplant Andy Ritchie, and the second live episode, coming up this Sunday, will find the duo playing storm chasers and presenting a taped tour bus interview with Reckless Kelly, as well as showcasing special guests that will assuredly keep it very, very weird.

In the Can With Martha Kelly will play Sunday, May 31, 8pm, at Cap City Comedy Club, 8120 Research. For more information, call 467-2333, and to watch archived interviews and read Kelly's "bloggish" column, visit www.capcitycomedy.com.