At Door 4 Brewery on March 27, the Millikin arts cafe hosted a comedy night. It was a low one dollar to enter for the event. The event had four comedians all doing there stand up acts.

The idea for a comedy night is a great one, and many people love the idea of comedy night, the only issue is almost none of them were there.

The event was supposed to start at 7:30 and when my fellow Dec writer and I showed up we seemed to be the only two who showed up and paid the cover charge. Millikin Arts Cafe didn’t seem prepared, and the early technological issues did not help create confidence. It was hard to tell how many people actually came themselves, because there were quite a few people but most if not all were affiliated with the Millikin Arts Cafe.

Once the issues regarding the mic were fixed, it was finally time to start. The four comedians who performed were Nicole Dadoly, Cole Burdick, Trace Davidson, and Chris Cunningham. The show progressed in that order, and each comedian took about twenty minutes each on stage.

Nicole Dadoly was the first comedian and was how the show actually began. Her set was mostly composed of complaining about people who say they’re from Chicago when they’re just near Chicago, busses, Mexican neighbors and finally a long-winded story about her as a little girl.

She seemed to be new at this, and the set felt longer than twenty minutes. She was trying to be exciting and draw attention on stage with her constant movement and pitch changing, but all it did was seem awkward. Dadoly sadly just wasn’t funny. I didn’t hear a laugh from anyone including the people in the Arts Cafe, The biggest problem was that this wasn’t an open mic night, but they referenced all four performers as a talent which only lead me to expect better especially when the opening act almost made me want to leave.

Next was Cole Burdick. The man came up on stage dressed in a suit and let us know that he wasn’t dressed up for us but for his previous job. His set was fairly funny and kept me from almost leaving. He told stories about crapping his pants at three AM, his crazy high school math teacher and some humor about having to run in track and field.

His set wasn’t perfect, and I felt some jokes were poorly executed and he started his set with a Seinfeld style joke which definitely made me groan no matter how ironic he was trying to be with it, all of that said he was still a good performer.

Trace Davidson took the stage after Burdick. Davidson seemed a little nervous on stage, and his jokes had a little bit of slow-timing to them. He was using flashcards to remind him of what jokes he was on. Now the reading off a list or cards can be funny if done right, but sadly the timing was just too off for them to work and most of the time it felt like a jump from one joke to another without any real flow.

That being said Davidson wants to do comedy and definitely has the humor but just needs a little more work on the delivery. He, however, did tell the funniest joke of the night by making fun of some of the audience–myself included.

The final act of the night was Chris Cunningham, and he was the perfect way to end the night. Out of all of the performers, he seemed the most natural and above all else, he was the funniest of the group. His set consisted of some jokes regarding travel, sports, and his girlfriend. He had great timing the jokes flowed well into one another, but most importantly Cunningham was the most confident on stage. He did, however, end the set with a 9/11 joke that was neither funny nor a good way to end the set.

All in all the night was above average. The night could have been so much better than it was, they could have gotten more people to come to the event for one. Wednesday is a hard day to schedule stuff when they are already competing with lots of other things. The comedy was pretty good, and I look forward to hopefully seeing most of them on stage again. There is a need and want for a comedy night, and now there is room to grow.