Middlebury Brothel show cracks up Midd-kids

Author: Tom McCann

Finally, the Middlebury comedy scene has a new kid on the block. Two and a half years after the idea was born, juniors Ellen Wohlberg and Charlie Tomm have made good on their promise and delivered The Middlebury Brothel to the fun-loving students of Middlebury College. According to Wohlberg, "We finally got together and decided that we only have a year and a bit of school left so if we were going to do it, we needed to do it now."

She explained that what first brought the two founders together was a shared love for an American bastion of humor - Saturday Night Live (SNL). "We became friends when we found out we both loved Steve Martin and we both wanted to write for Saturday Night Live," Tomm said."I loved SNL when it was good and I wanted to get something similar started here since we didn't have that. We wanted to try something new." Wohlberg says the major characteristic of the group that differentiates it from the other comedy group on campus, Otter Nonsense, is that "we write all the material. We're a sketch comedy club." She added, "We're experimenting right now, but if friends have written something, we're open to anything. We offer a different type of humor and a different type of show. We want to bring as much humor and comedy to the campus as possible."

Ironically enough, had events turned out differently, The Middlebury Brothel may never have been created in the first place. Tomm explained, "I love improv but when we both got turned down from Otter Nonsense we decided to try something new." Wohlberg added, "Most schools have at least two comedy clubs. Charlie and I both like writing and we wanted to make a club that was focused on writing its own things."

In their debut performance, Wohlberg and Tomm were joined by fellow juniors Elizabeth Fulling and Adam Swick, sophomores MacLeod Andrews, Alex Strauss and Meg Young and senior Rebecca Schutz in the Forest basement. While Wohlberg and Tomm are the only actual members of the group, everyone contributed hugely to the overall production, ensuring a highly entertaining evening for everyone in attendance.

The group performed a selection of sketches written by Wohlberg and Tomm, while also included an adaptation from Dave Barry's book, "Dave Barry's Guide To Guys," hilariously illustrating the irreconcilable differences between male and female thought processes. In a break from traditional sketch comedy, Swick sat himself in an armchair and proceeded to tell a series of anecdotes from his summer job at a country club in New Hampshire, entertaining the audience with his delivery as much as with the content itself.

In looking back on the long-awaited debut of the club, Wohlberg reflected, "We were very pleased with the first show. It was pretty crowded and all our friends came but there were also a good number of people we hadn't seen before so we were happy about that. We were really happy with the people we recruited, too. They were really fun and we appreciated their help."

With the curtain raiser a success, Tomm is already looking to the future. He noted, "We got about eight people who signed up and said they would be interested, and we have some people in mind who we're hoping to contact to write or act for us." The duo would like to put on another show before the end of the year, and Tomm said, "Hopefully we'll get people writing other than ourselves for this next show. Hopefully we'll get another one in before the year's out, as another study break or something like that."

However, the ultimate goal for Wohlberg and Tomm is that their newly-founded club does not die upon their graduation. Wohlberg commented, "We'd like to become as big as the Otters and we want to make it strong enough and recruit enough to keep it going when we graduate." Tomm affirmed that this has been a topic of conversation among the two of them.

For now though, The Middlebury Brothel remains the new sketch club on campus, only really known to the lucky few who attended its first show. However, if the first performance was any indication, the popularity and stature of this club is only going to soar as time goes on. It was a fine start for Wohlberg, Tomm and friends, but now the challenge is to build on the foundation they have laid. Expectations are high, and based on their debut performance, it's easy to see why.