Franco Center Comedy Series continues Feb. 7
The Franco Center’s stand-up comedy series will resume on Friday, February 7 at 8 p.m. with headliner Michael “The Korean Comedian” Cho and warm-up sets by New Hampshire comics Greg Boggis and Matt Barry. Tickets are $12 in advance and $15 at the door.
The show is the second of five monthly stand-up comedy nights taking place through May at the Franco Center, in addition to an evening with comedian Bob Marley, who returns with two back-to-back shows on the night of April 12.
Cho’s comedy, which he delivers in a thick Korean accent, centers on the cultural differences between Americans and people from Asian countries. He highlights the often awkward situations that can result, such as when people assume he’s either a computer programming expert or an authority on Chinese food.
In Cho’s jokes, these cultural misunderstandings run both ways. He riffs on the sport of curling, whose appeal he finds baffling, or how the Americans he encounters have regional accents that sound nothing like the ones he and his parents heard on American records and cassette tapes as they were learning to speak English in their native South Korea.
Barry is a young comedian whose material mines the transition to adulthood that, even in his twenties, he’s still not quite ready to make. The winner of the New England’s Best Bar Comic competition in 2013, he still lives with his parents to avoid having to get a “real” job and so he can pursue his dream of being a stand-up comedian. He describes himself as a rock climber and whiskey drinker, although never both at the same time.
Boggis went naturally into comedy after being named class clown at Milford Area High School in New Hampshire. The only downside, he says, is that this natural career progression didn’t occur until after a long series of dead-end jobs as a greens-keeper, factory worker, carpenter, plumber, painter, college security officer, and pirate for children’s birthday parties.
Tickets may be purchased at the box office from noon to 4 p.m. Monday through Friday, or anytime by calling 689-2000 or at www.francocenter.org.