Boston Globe: “Comedy audiences can head indoors, but music fans will have to wait”

Mar 19, 2021

from The Boston Globe
Friday, March 19th, 2021

Social distancing will be in full effect when Laugh Boston hosts its “Grand-Ish Reopening” beginning, aptly enough, on April Fool’s Day. Operating at 50 percent capacity, per state guidelines, the club will maintain the requisite spacing between parties not by covering off-limits seats with “crime tape,” says owner Norm Laviolette, but with mannequins and stuffed animals.

“We’ll make sure that you’re safe and we’re abiding by the policies,” he says. “But it can also be fun.”

Stand-up comedy is about to make a comeback, and not a moment too soon. On Saturday, the Comedy Scene at Patriot Place in Foxborough will host Milton native Corey Rodrigues, followed a week later by local legend Steve Sweeney. The North End’s Improv Asylum, also owned by Laviolette, resumes its weekend shows March 26.

In Saugus, Mike Clarke’s Giggles Comedy Club reopens this weekend under a tent in the Prince Pizzeria parking lot with his brother, Lenny Clarke, headlining.

Indoor live music remains in limbo as club owners and managers sort through the latest guidelines; this month, the Baker administration began permitting indoor performance venues to operate at half capacity, but with strict requirements, including no singing. Still, the day is drawing nearer when our ears will be ringing with live music once again.

“My hands are tied until the powers-that-be tell me I can have people in there while somebody is singing,” says Jay Balerna, longtime owner of the Midway Cafe in Jamaica Plain. “That seems to be the crux of it — expelling the aerosols and all that.”

While vaccination numbers continue to improve, Balerna senses that the public may not be quite ready to rush back into nightclubs.

“It’s the antithesis of social distancing,” he says. “You want people close together, dancing, having a blast. That’s what my business plan is.”

The Midway staff has been livestreaming shows from their stage, including their popular jam-band “Hippie Hour” each Friday.

“Music soothes the soul,” says Balerna. He’s stayed afloat in part through donations from the livestreams: “Someone will donate five or 10 bucks and say, ‘I needed that Hippie Hour.’ ”

Like so many businesses, the performance venues that have survived the pandemic have been forced to improvise.

Last summer the staff of the Improv Asylum kept the doors open in part by offering curbside dining with a food menu drawing from several neighboring restaurants. On a lark, Laviolette began asking customers if they’d like to order a witty dinner guest with their meal. Comedians starving to make someone laugh put on their masks and pulled up a chair with adventurous dinner parties.

“I was the ‘conversation sommelier,’ ” Laviolette says. “I’d ask if anyone had any conversational allergies.”

Word-of-mouth got around, and soon the club was taking reservations. An unexpected success, the patio concept, called The Front Porch will remain part of the Improv Asylum’s game plan, returning as soon as weather permits.

“Our job as comedians is to surprise and delight,” Laviolette says. “Disruption forces you to do different things.”

To him, the arts community is quite capable of innovation.

“The arts have great experience with moving people in and out, and adopting the newest best practices,” he says. “We’re good at it. It’s not a shock.”

Shlomo Lipetz, vice president of programming for the City Winery network of performance venues, says he’s encouraged by the return of live performance in New York City. In the coming weeks, the City Winery in New York will present stripped-down, reduced-capacity shows featuring Rufus Wainwright, Raul Malo, and others.

Live shows are still on hiatus at the Boston venue, Lipetz says, but the restaurant will reopen April 8.

“There’s no right or wrong answer to this,” he says. “Texas opened 100 percent, but a lot of the talent doesn’t feel they want to be in that situation yet. In New York, almost everyone I know is either vaccinated or waiting to get theirs. There’s definitely going to be, for the next six months, a lot of fluidity.”

Slowly but surely, shows are appearing on calendars at various venues around Greater Boston. Country songwriter Chris Janson is booked to play the Casino Ballroom in Hampton, N.H., on April 29. Nicole Atkins has a date reserved July 8 at the Sinclair.

“It’s been such a horrific time for everyone,” says Laviolette. “People are desperate to relax, to laugh, to de-stress. The psychological health of the community is at least somewhat as important as the physical health.”

In his business, he hears the old adage all the time: Laughter is the best medicine.

“I would go with penicillin,” he jokes. “But after that, yeah, laughter is up there.”

James Sullivan can be reached at jamesgsullivan@gmail.com. Follow him on Twitter @sullivanjames.