Sketches! Or It Didn't Happen at Magnetic

Sketches! Or It Didn’t Happen, the hilarious new sketch comedy show now at the Magnetic Theatre, is only playing through August 14, so get your tickets fast.

Writers Linda Azar, Carmela Caruso, Joe Carroll, Tom Chalmers, Julia Christgau, Marlene Thompson, and Matt Wilson are responsible for this locally brewed comedy, a zany mashup between SNL and Portlandia that had the whole audience laughing uproariously through their masks.

In this weird, maybe-post-, maybe-mid-COVID era, who couldn’t use a few genuine belly laughs?

Directed by Asheville Comedy Renaissance Man Tom Chalmers and anchored by a stellar six-person ensemble (including three of the writers), Sketches! is exactly as advertised: a dozen or so short vignettes that explore the absurd tragicomedy of living in post-COVID Beer City.

In one scene, a buttoned-up partner (Azar) at the firm of Accountant, Accountant, and Accountant goes postal on a very unqualified job interviewee (Devan Stevens). In another, Ana Alicia Carroll plays a regular person who holds a press conference to announce the very regular news that she is going shopping…in person (gasp!) after a year of online purchases.

And how could one forget a faux-ad for ancestry.com where one of the testimonials (Thompson) admits her genealogical disposition to eating human flesh?

There’s even a scenario where several murder hornets (remember them?) strategize how to make people afraid again after COVID-19 stole their thunder — while competing with their new rivals for Most Feared Bugs, the 17-year cicadas.

And we haven’t even gotten to the Zoom cats’ butthole adventures.

My favorite sketch featured two performers (Joe Carroll and Chris Mako) who don blue ponchos and play the literal water that shoots out of the Splashville fountains in Pack Square (“We’re lucky; I’ve got a cousin who works in a bidet,” Mako opines).

The live scenes are punctuated with slick, projected videos (directed by Christgau) that match the onstage antics with their hilarity. One notable series is “Garrett’s Kitchen,” where we meet a well-meaning DIY chef (Joe Carroll) who becomes increasingly deranged as his quarantine progresses.

One danger of multifaceted comedy shows like this one is a tendency to feel sloppy or meandering. Not Sketches! Tom Chalmers makes sure the show proceeds at a snappy pace, and all the many sound and light cues are perfectly timed. The actors were clearly well-rehearsed and the jokes were on point.

The result is a well-built comedy machine that hums along, leaving laughter — and maybe even a few drops of Splashville water — in its wake.

Sketches! Or It Didn’t Happen: A TMT Comedy Revue plays through August 14 at The Magnetic Theatre in Asheville’s River Arts District. For tickets and more information, visit MTheMagneticTheatre.org.

Photos: Courtesy of Magnetic Theatre. (Top photo: Devin Stevens and Linda Azar)

Chris Mako and Joe Carroll portray the Splashville fountains as part of “Sketches.”