Gil Faizon (comedian Nick Kroll) stands on stage with a fat-lipped grimace and deflated posture, his floral shirt sticking through the unzipped fly of his ill-fitting slacks. He exchanges adorably racist remarks with his geriatric best friend George St. Geegland (stand-up John Mulaney). "Like most of the people in this city, we are liberal racists," says St. Geegland as the two Upper West Side roommates bond over their love of Alan Alda and "c'caine." Barely a word goes by without swapping vowel sounds and scrambling syllables—and nearly every second of it is essential comedy.
Kroll and Mulaney have brought their curmudgeonly Kroll Show characters to the stage in Oh, Hello. After a sold-out month at New York's Cherry Lane Theatre, the show has hit the road, including five performances at Hollywood's Ricardo Montalbán Theatre.
Oh, Hello finds failed celebrities George and Gil staging a loosely autobiographical play, in which two weirdo bachelors pitch a TV show in order to afford a rent increase. But that barely begins to explain the hour-and-a-half performance, in which the two self-described old men-slash-babies oscillate between scripted comedy and improv as they cleverly skewer overdramatic theater tropes while also staging a play-within-a-play—and still finding room for an interpretive dance sequence and a "hostile press conference" Q&A.
Photograph: Courtesy Christian Frarey
The characters' demeanor and mannerisms, particularly Gil's, are endearingly rooted in old Jewish men stereotypes. "I feel like I'm stuck between two Bernie Sanders," remarked Lena Dunham, the surprise guest during "Too Much Tuna," the pair's interview and faux-prank show segment. Their greying unkempt mops and strained articulation may suggest a sort of Woody Allen neuroticism, but Gil and George don't fit neatly into a single archetype. These are drug-addled, late-life bachelors with a love of Steely Dan and a distrust of Caribbean housekeepers. Or as the characters themselves say in soliloquies early on in the show, these are guys who go through people's coats at parties and bring food into the bathroom.
Gil and George are undoubtedly New Yorkers—you can expect super-specific musings on Midtown diner fare, Upper West Side rent control and news station NY1—but Kroll and Mulaney are Angelenos (they even workshopped the show at Largo late last year). The East Coast references, though never impenetrable, are balanced out by a healthy dose of off-the-cuff LA references; on Wednesday, that included an extended riff on Vons, Jons, Lassens and Gelson's, and at which store you can find gluten-free Gorilla Munch Cereal. But the city-specific references are ultimately secondary to the two characters'—and comedians'—quick wit and stellar chemistry.
"Oh, Hello" runs through April 3 at the Ricardo Montalbán Theatre. Tickets costs between $39 and $69.