Review: BEST KEPT SECRET: TELL EVERYONE at The Second City E.t.c.

The Second City’s latest e.t.c. revue BEST KEPT SECRET: TELL EVERYONE wants to remind audiences that life is a cabaret, old chum. While some Second City revue themes hang together better than others, BEST KEPT SECRET slyly pays homage to the classic Kander and Ebb musical CABARET and the general idea of cabaret shows. For this musical theater nerd, that’s a win. Ensemble members Meghan Babbe, Claudia Martinez, Tim Metzler, Terrence Carey, Jenelle Cheyne, and Javid Iqbal consistently carry that theme through the show’s various sketches and improvised moments. 

In keeping with the show’s title, the ensemble also solicits audience secrets at the top of the show, encouraging showgoers to drop them into strategically placed goblets at the front of the stage. These secrets are used throughout the show, but they are particularly funny in a spoken word sketch in which Carey divulges many of them in an improvised speak-singing confessional. 

BEST KEPT SECRET is solidly funny and well paced and the central themes of secrets and illusions are logical and woven throughout the sketches. As with any Second City revue, some sketches hit more than others. But this show cleared the bar of making me laugh out loud and freely. Highlights include an act one sketch in Cheyne invites audiences to rise and sing the National Anthem...only to learn that the sketch is, in fact, a test for Canadian citizenship. The device allows Cheyne to brutally skewer the state of American politics (as with most Second City shows, the politics are wholly liberal.)

The first act ends with an on-stage heist, featuring Babbe as lively night club host Sandra Night Faloola guiding an audience member through it with the help of her fellow ensemble members. It was a fun way to tie it all together.

In a similar vein, the material I enjoyed most in BEST KEPT SECRET was the most wholesome and fun. In possibly my favorite sketch, Martinez and Iqbal play son and father. Martinez is a teenaged aspiring DJ jamming out in their room...but Iqbal keeps finding new reasons to interrupt the jam session. John Love’s musical direction and sound design are particularly clever in this moment as well, and the rapport between Martinez and Iqbal is fun to watch. In another goofy yet charming sketch, Carey plays an engaged man moving out of his bachelor pad who must bid farewell to his spider buddy, played by Metzler. The sketch is unserious, but it deserved its easy laughs, and it allowed Metzler to show off his physical acting chops. Overall, BEST KEPT SECRET doesn’t rely much on physical comedy, but Metzler is the most adept at working that into his ibts. 

BEST KEPT SECRET: TELL EVERYONE is a solidly enjoyable and funny night at the cabaret. 

The Second City e.t.c.’s BEST KEPT SECRET: TELL EVERYONE plays on Thursdays - Sundays in an open run at the e.t.c. Theater, 230 West North Avenue on the second floor of Piper’s Alley. Tickets start at $29. 

Photo Credit: Timothy M. Schmidt

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