Minnesota Fringe Festival 2010

Droll witticisms performed for the entertainment of people seated in the dark.

"One of my favorite Minneapolis comics. Odd, endearing, adored by hipsters and
Wobegonians alike." Maria Bamford

"A comedy force wrapped in a riddle trapped in a paradox dressed in a bear suit."
McSweeney's Internet Tendency

"Weird, dark, twisted, hilarious." METRO Magazine

"Brian Beatty works with both a scalpel and a hammer. He's a dry wit who isn't above
the occasional bawdy one-liner." Dessa

“I never recommend things done by people who defeat me in Literary Death Matches,
but if you miss this show you will have made a serious fucking mistake.” John Jodzio

"Brian does more in four lines than most of us do by five p.m." Opium Magazine

"A one-man hootenanny. You never know what you're going to get, but it's always
entertaining!" Mary Mack

"The Matsuo Basho of American comedy." Dylan Brody

"He's got some good quotes, but anyone willing to buy someone a drink can get
a good quote." Some guy named Gary

Here's a short trailer for Brian's show.



Here's Brian plugging "The Big Four Oh" at this year's Fringe-for-All 2 at the Ritz.



Since then the show's been featured, recommended and/or reviewed by City Pages,
FringeFamous, Minnesota Playlist, The Star Tribune, TC Daily Planet, Today's Pretty
and WCCO TV.

"There’s something for everyone here, and also something likely to make everyone squirm...
This show is honest, raw and smart. Brian is forging a new frontier that’s a little hard to define;
it both is and isn’t stand-up, memoir, storytelling, improv, and performance art (this guy can
work a bear suit). Awesome." Kate Hoff, TC Daily Planet

"A wonderfully dry, funny, and smart show that had me howling." Mo Perry, Minnesota Playlist

Brian Beatty
Role: Writer. Comedian. Dude with a beard.

Brian's jokes, poems and stories have appeared in numerous print and online publications, including Conduit, elimae,
The Evergreen Review, Gigantic, McSweeney's Internet Tendency and Quarterly Concern, mnartists.org, Monkeybicycle, Opium, The Quarterly, The Rake and Seventeen.

The August 2009 issue of METRO featured Brian among the magazine's favorite funny Twin Citizens. Here's a video he made for their readers.

Brian's performed at The 331 Club, Bedlam Theatre, Brave New Workshop, Fitzgerald Theatre, The Improv in Hollywood, Nomad World Pub, Northrop Memorial Auditorium, The Soap Factory and The Walker Art Center.

Brian co-wrote the 2004 Minnesota Fringe Festival sketch comedy sensation "Results Not Typical" with the show's stars, Julie Grover McArdle and Jim Robinson.

"The Big Four Oh: 40 Jokes, Poems and Stories by Brian Beatty" is his solo festival debut.

User reviews

Meh.
by amihan huesmann Follow this reviewer
Rating 3 kitties
I laughed some. I did. But I also contemplated supper (this was a 1 p.m. show), fatigue, future fringe plans, and air conditioning.

A welcomed stand-up entry
by Florence Brammer Follow this reviewer
Rating 3 kitties
I love stand-up and was happy to see this show in this year's Fringe schedule. I had not seen Beatty before, but as a big Maria Bamford fan, her praise was added motivation to go. Beatty was swimming upstream at the show I saw, a 1 p.m. slot with a small audience. His unique material and delivery are artful and obviously executed with a lot of thought and care. The personal material was often as poignant as it was funny.

Best dead-pan in the fringe
by Gabriel Heller Follow this reviewer
Rating 4 kitties
Not very many comics these days and almost no comics in the fringe cling to the traditional dead-pan delivery with such tenacity as Brian Beatty, and the audience response can be spotty at best. Fortunately, Mr. Beatty completely understands the mix of droll and ridiculous required to get an audience rolling with laughter without once cracking a smile and he employs it remarkably well in this show. I'm not sure I understand why he chose this title; much of the material is unrelated or only very tangentially related to it, but I can't say I could come up with a better one. If you're, say, a Christopher Guest fan, this is the show for you. If not, you will likely enjoy it as well.

wonderfully askew
by mark browning milner Follow this reviewer
Rating 4 kitties
i enjoyed this one very, very much. funny stories, hilarious poems, goofy observations, and the driest delivery this side of steven wright. *plus* the best bear costume of the fringe. one show to go - try and squeeze mr. beatty into your saturday schedule.

Left with achy cheeks
by Ashley Hudson Follow this reviewer
Rating 5 kitties
Brian surprised me from the start - and I laughed all the way through. There is an intelligence to his comedy that you know it's incredibly well-thought through and calculated - right down to the awkward pauses - which do make you squirm, but also make you curious what he's going to come up with next. My only regret is I wish I hadn't waited so long to see him in action!

Great Show
by nick zdon Follow this reviewer
Rating 5 kitties
Having seen Brian perform many times over the past couple years, I have to say that this show is particularly satisfying. He does everything he always does so well, dead pan (and dead on) one-liners, skewed and somewhat surreal poetry and I-can't-believe-that-actually-happened storytelling. The Big Four Oh takes all that and adds some of Brian's best and most personal material to date. It's a one guy show and Brian does it on his own terms. His delivery is deceptively slow. While the show may seem like a leisurely stroll, his punchlines come from out of nowhere, and before you know it he's taking you down a new hilarious path. I was so engrossed by the end of the show that I couldn't believe it had been a whole hour.

Peaty but still yummy
by Joshua Wenck Follow this reviewer
Rating 5 kitties
Mr. Beatty's one man show is like a 40 year-old scotch. It might smell like a pair of sweaty leather boots but if you add an ice cube and sip it slowly you gain an appreciation for the care and craftsmanship behind the dark and peculiar flavors. Give it some time, swish him around your mouth and enjoy Mr. Beatty's well-aged humor.

The Messiah of Mirth
by Rob Callahan Follow this reviewer
Rating 5 kitties
It's a funny thing with stand up. A guy does the same act exactly the same way twice in a night, Friday and Saturday for a total of four shows, and it goes four different ways. One crowd hates him while another worships him and the remaining two fall somewhere to one side or another of indifference. I guess that's just how comedy is.

Because on Wednesday night, in spite of some previous bad reviews, I went to see Brian Beatty and he 0wned the stage. Not one joke was missed and the packed audience was in a nearly perpetual state of laughter.

Based on what I saw, Brian Beatty is perhaps one of the funniest comics in town. He's definitely offensive, too, but so was George Carlin. In fact, Beatty seems to have a lot of Carlin in him.

Last year some reviewers called Ben San Del the next Joseph Scrimshaw. So when that happens, and someone needs to step up and be the next Ben San Del, I nominate this guy.

Is that sweat? No, it's tears.
by Debbie Prokopf Follow this reviewer
Rating 5 kitties
I laughed, I squirmed, I laughed some more.

Brian is a seriously funny dude with plenty of material you wouldn't laugh at in front of your mom. You gotta love a guy who compares himself (favorably, I'd say) to Jesus Christ.

Growing up with a nervous breakdown
by Carly Schumacher Follow this reviewer
Rating 4 kitties
Brian's dry style of delivery works like a charm. His show is hilarious, and I couldn't stop laughing! From tragedy to hilarity to "oh my, did he really just say that" and more. This show is a MUST SEE for anyone who loves to laugh!

Slow-talking standup
by Fringivitis Vulgaris Follow this reviewer
Rating 2 kitties
He does talk about turning 40. He also discusses religion, social problems, politics, and cultural quirks. He seems pleased to use vulgar speech solely for the purpose of making the audience squirm. Not his best show but it's an OK in-between gig if you're in the area and are difficult to offend.

Tight Set
by Nancy Ruyle Follow this reviewer
Rating 5 kitties
Brian rocked the house tonight. A set of really great stand up, followed by some funny poems,and wrapped up with a well-constructed story. Brian is a master of dark comedy and utilizes what at first glance looks like a misanthropic take on the world. As the evening progresses you find that there's a big 'ole heart in this big bear.

What Maria Bamford Said
by Mark Long Follow this reviewer
Rating 5 kitties
Brian was very funny and bold enough to leave us on a...well...interesting story note.
I pray I don't see someone eating a sandwich in a Fringe line.

The Big Four Oh No.
by Carole Vandal Follow this reviewer
Rating 2 kitties
Brian Beatty Presents us with 40 jokes, poems, and stories.

Personally I could have passed on some of his repartees though I enjoyed his poetry. I like high energy comedy and Brian’s style did not knock my socks off. A Shockwave Radio Theater Review.

Self-Depricating Humor Turns Serious
by Chuck Beeson Follow this reviewer
Rating 3 kitties
I enjoy finding an excuse to see a show at Bryant Lake Bowl, so I picked an act I saw at the History Theatre Fringe-For-All, Brian Beatty’s stand-up show, “The Big Four-Oh”. At his showcase, he said there were to be no dick jokes, only dick poems, so I prepared for a sardonic hour of comedy and some creative little poems. And I got that. The audience was mostly people near or above the big 4-0’s and pretty full for a Sunday afternoon. Mr. Beatty came on to the stage in a bear costume, taking fully two minutes to take off the costume, without explanation, and lay it down on the stage. When he didn’t get big laughs for his routine, he began to cut himself down, which he should avoid doing in future performances. After his jokes about health care and life coaches, he read a series of one-liner poems, very funny concept. Then he told a lengthy two-part story about being held at gunpoint and some scary stuff that happened to him when he was a kid and how he overcame it. That was the best part of the show, his story telling. I was at rapt attention, as were others, as we waited to find out how he was going to win in the stories he told. So I give this act three kitties, because he can be so much better with what he is doing if he tightens the act and gives it more energy, even though it moves at a slower pace.

A Slow Burn of Subtle Storytelling
by Nate Melcher Follow this reviewer
Rating 5 kitties
My highly-complimentary analogy for this show is this: some comedy is like a roaring bonfire, hot and huge and bursting with energy. Brian Beatty's comedy is more like smoldering embers, slowly burning with occasional pops.

I don't know about you, but while bonfires are great, there's something wonderful about sitting with friends around the warm, orange glow of a well-spent campfire, where the real stories, conversations, and connections are made. This is where Brian Beatty's show comes in. It's personal, conversational, and most importantly, funny. Sprinkled with "meta" moments that acknowledge how the show is going, Beatty presents a sometimes self-deprecating performance that's patient with itself and challenges its audience to follow suit.

The writing is tight. As Beatty weaves a story within a story within a story, one can feel the connecting threads pull on one another and tighten with suspense both within the tales themselves and for the audience as we learn how everything fits together. Stories bookend the performance - the opening about old religions versus Beatty's "new" religion and the finale about how often a man can have a gun aimed in his face - with poetry highlighting the middle of the show.

Beatty's poetry is accessible, too. Rich in subtle humor, each poem delivers the sort of comedy that saw two levels of laughter: guffaws from the "I got it right away" Alpha laughers and an even bigger reaction from the "I had to think about it just a second but now that I get it, I love it" crowd.

Plus, if you usually find the word "poetry" off-putting, Beatty's poems could just as easily be called jokes, one-liners, and short stories. Leave your English 101 worries of identifying meter and thematical use of enjambment at the door (and I say this as a former college English instructor).

As for the delivery, his vocal intonation matches both his themes and his physical presence. Beatty's performance is like a live version of Droopy Dog only not as optimistic. And that's a wonderful thing.

Dark. Twisted. Hilarious.
by Andrew Fafoutakis Follow this reviewer
Rating 4 kitties
Brian Beatty's smooth, radio-personality growl might lull you into a false sense of security, but then he'll crack a joke over your head so witty and clever, you won't see it coming. Brian shares some fun one-liners, small poems, and great stories that make the hour fly by. A one-man show that captures the imagination and keeps you laughing from a wicked sense of humor. Go see this show.

DRY AND SMART
by nancy Zhao Follow this reviewer
Rating 3 kitties
I saw this the same day as I saw Wisdom part 1, these two artists could learn from each other. I liked Brian but wondered if he was a bit autistic. This could have been better with a little more work. Overall I like his style. went from quick one line laughs to edge of my seat suspense storytelling.

Stephen Wright on Valium
by Dave Romm Follow this reviewer
Rating 3 kitties
Brian Beatty has an ear for the epigram, and I looked forward to this show. But his extremely dry delivery didn't work on a hot day. I'm glad I went, and glad I have his book, but hope for a bit more energy next time. A Shockwave Radio Theater Review.

Longer reviews with pictures at Baron Dave's LiveJournal and snarky comments on Facebook.

It's not a musical
by Colin Cox Follow this reviewer
Rating 5 kitties
And, thank God for that. I'm afraid of what the dance numbers might look like.

Instead, you get a great set of jokes and poems, and a truly captivating story to cap it all off.

And, if the word "poem," makes you think, "Why's he got to include that sh*t?" Then, I am happy to report that these are the kinds of poems that would make Emily Dickinson spin in her grave -- but, probably from laughter.

So, mix in a little Brian to your Fringe. It's well worth the time.

Cackle's McGee can't be wrong
by Levi Weinhagen Follow this reviewer
Rating 5 kitties
I can honestly say I saw this show.

If you've seen Mr. Beatty on stage then you already know he's quite funny and surprising.

If you haven't then you're life has a big beard shaped hole in it that this show will fill.

If you're the lady sitting behind me who couldn't breathe much of the time because you were cackling so much and so loudly I hope you're okay.

Go see Brian be funny and make people uncomfortable all at the same time. You'll laugh, you'll sweat, you'll leave wanting a sandwich.

Great way to kick off the Fringe.
by Wendy Ruyle Follow this reviewer
Rating 5 kitties
I knew Brian could bring the dry wit in his jokes and poems. What I didn't know is he could tell a story like that. It is sweet, moving, and laugh-out-loud funny all at the same time but still makes you squirm just enough to know you're at the Fringe.