The Second City Toronto’s latest revue continues the recent trend away from the political and personal and towards more clear cut comedy. As is often the case, I wanted more of a throughline from the established theme of magic (a successful bit featuring Jesus proves the power of recurrence but I always want more). My theatre girl heart always longs for tonal complexity and overall narrative over straight laughs. One day I will learn that sketch shows in that model are the exception not the rule and this new normal is more, well, normal.

Nevertheless, here I am stumping for more sketches that are at least a little bit sad, like Chelsea Larkin & Gavin Pounds’ best-of-the-night conversation about dating after turning 37.

This cast is stacked with standouts from Toronto’s comedy circuit, including the stars of memorable shows from Bad Dog, Fringe, SketchFest, and even the CBC (the delightful Tim Blair’s troupe TallBoyz II Men had their own self-titled CBC show in the style of Baroness Von Sketch). Personal favourite Gillian Bartolucci delivers as she always does with unmatched energy and precision, tackling her objectively fun job with the real work attitude that it’s cool to actually try hard. Pounds (from the all-time-great sketch group Dame Judy Dench) shines in the show’s many improv bits though his straight faced absurdism leads to so much corpsing from the rest of the cast.

Ultimately a somewhat ho-hum revue that will likely be lost to memory, World’s Gone Wild is, as was the assignment, a perfectly nice night out or second date or corporate event. There was a time, though, when The Second City was aiming a bit higher than that and, no, I’m not going to stop bringing that up.