A “Saturday Night Live” cast member brought a nearly sold-out auditorium to tears after making jokes about cartoon characters being suicidal, bachelorette parties, pop country music and his renowned impressions of President Donald Trump, former President Joe Biden and former Vice President Kamala Harris.
James Austin Johnson, 35, was the headliner of the Great American Comedy Festival’s second day at the Johnny Carson Theatre in Norfolk.
He performed an hourlong segment, which had audience members howling with laughter and shaking their heads.
Johnson, from Nashville, Tennessee, has had a decorated career as a stand-up comedian. He got his big break when, at 32 years old, the Nashville comic auditioned and became a cast member for NBC’s “Saturday Night Live.” He joined the cast in the 47th season and played a crucial role in the success of the 50th season with one of his sketches as Trump topping 8 million views alone.
Johnson also was a cast member in the award-winning show “Barry” and was also the voice actor for Pouchy in “Inside Out 2.” His presence was electric to the Norfolk crowd.
But, before the main event, there was a lineup of other comedians who were able to generate almost the same amount of energy that Johnson brought to the theater.
Chip Chantry, the host of the festival on Friday, introduced the show to the audience with a few quick-witted jokes before the first comic took the stage.
Chantry opened his act by telling the audience how he had bought a house recently, but after a decent amount of applause, Chantry shut the audience down with how unfortunate paying the bills has been and joked about each audience member Venmoing the comic $1,000.
One of his final jokes was him bantering about how the tradition of cake cutting disgusts him at weddings. He said that instead of watching happy married couples feed each other cake, he would much rather enjoy seeing recently divorced couples try the messy tradition instead.
David Perdue was the next to take the stage. Perdue, from Atlanta, has appeared and taped for Kevin Hart’s show, “Hart of the City,” on Comedy Central and was featured as the first digital cover of ComedyHype magazine. He also was named one of Atlanta’s “People to Watch” in 2017.
Perdue had the perfect oxymoronic blend of awkwardness and comfort on the stage with his first joke being about how opposite Norfolk is from where he grew up in Atlanta.
Perdue later would tell the audience about his favorite sport to watch, baseball, a sport he also played all his life because ‘it’s the only sport to encourage snacking.”
River Butcher walked across the stage next. Butcher has had his own special on Comedy Central and was also a key character in the hit show, “Adam Ruins Everything.” With an appearance on Ellen, Conan and HBO, River was named one of Vanity Fair’s “Ten Comics to Watch.”
Butcher’s set was focused on how he has navigated his life being transgender. He told the audience how he finds it hard to fit in with the LGBTQ+ community because of his more masculine appearance. Butcher said he fits the description of the average man from Montana rather than the queer community.
Butcher ended his segment by sharing the story of how he came out to his father about being trans. He commented on how having a full beard by the time he saw his father after his transition was enough for his father to see the result.
Adam Tiller, who looks like he belongs in an auto shop and a prison at the same time, was the penultimate act of comedians before the headliner.
Tiller, from Seattle, was a semifinalist in the 2022 Seattle International Comedy Competition and has opened for comedians such as Kevin Nealon, Jay Mohr and Ari Shaffir.
Tiller, who has driven more than 40,000 miles doing stand-up comedy, had a strange experience with a Canadian man, he told the crowd. The story included him meeting the rough-accented Canadian man and how fixated he was on asking Tiller if he had “winter tires” for the harsh winters in Canada. Tiller later hitched a ride with the Canadian and was offered a massage by him using maple syrup instead of baby oil.
Tiller told the audience he refuses to touch the app Instagram anymore because of how his mom interacts on the app with naivete, and he ended his act by saying that instead of looking like a comedian, he looks like every girl’s unfortunate, final Tinder date who appears on the news as a criminal.
Amy Shanker, based out of New York City and Austin, Texas, was the final comedian before the headliner. Shanker is a regular at New York Comedy Club and Laugh Factory and was featured on Kevin Hart’s LOL channel.
Shanker focused her act on growing up being a Jewish woman in a Christian or Catholic-predominant country.
Shanker recalled a time in fourth grade when she encountered a girl with a plethora of freckles on her face. That girl told the New York comedian her mom said that freckles are “angel kisses from heaven” and that she was very blessed to have them.
A disappointed young Shanker went to her mother to ask why she didn’t have those “angel kisses” and was told there was no heaven, as that is what Judaism teaches, and that her freckles are just a result of hyperpigmentation.
Shanker completely misunderstood her mother’s point and broke her misinterpreted news to the girl the next day at school by telling her, “Hey girl … so two things, there is no heaven and you’re going to die of skin cancer.”
Finally, to end the show, Johnson took the stage with a cadence that engaged the audience for his segment.
Johnson started his act by telling the audience he recently brought his 3-year-old son to Honolulu. His boy was excited to see volcanoes, and when Johnson had to break the news that there were no active volcanoes left in Hawaii, his son asked, “Are Lilo and Stitch at least going to be there?”
A panicked Johnson knew that he had to think of some way to convince his son that Lilo and Stitch cannot physically be in Hawaii, so instead of saying these fictional characters do not exist, he told his son that there was a freak murder suicide between Lilo and Stitch.
Johnson later would recall his time in Nashville as an aspiring musician while also saying how much he dislikes the current age of music centered on “pop country.” Johnson made fun of the many singers with Brown and Brian as their last names and that the music is generally about attending a party that the Nashville comedian would never want to attend, even if he were paid millions of dollars.
Johnson, for the main segment of his show, brought his impressions of Trump, Biden and Harris to the stage. He told the audience that Trump can not read but can speak, that Biden, on the contrary, cannot speak but can read and that Harris is a step away from hosting a Netflix cooking competition program.
One of his impressions of Trump was about how the current president could not go on the Fox reality show “Masked Singer,” because of the uniqueness of his voice and how he articulates his words. He performed a made-up cover on how Trump would sing “Before He Cheats,” by Carrie Underwood.
Johnson also made fun of how Biden would speak at press conferences or government addresses, “Biden loves to say, ‘You know my mom always had a saying,’ ” during every speech. However, the saying was always too specific to the topic of his speech, which left American citizens deeply confused.
Johnson, toward the end of the show, shared an encounter he had with a man in Los Angeles who was discussing the riots that are happening on the streets of L.A. To diffuse the argument, Johnson brought up the Jan. 6 riots to the L.A. man, which ended the discussion instantaneously.
“If I keep on doing the comedy I do, I should probably work on a Plan B,” the Nashville comedian told the crowd.
Johnson ended his act by doing an impression of Bob Dylan and cursed the singer for inspiring the likes of Machine Gun Kelly, an artist he deeply despises.
To end the night, all the comedians performed at the District Event Center for a Friday late-night bar show at 10:30 p.m.
Saturday night will be the final day of the comedy festival, starting at 7 at the same venue and will feature Yakov Smirnoff the headliner, as well as the aforementioned Chantry, Eunji Kim, Cameron Logsdon and Tiller as the host.
