JESSI CRUICKSHANK
Where: Royal Theatre, 805 Broughton St.
When: Friday, Nov. 4, 7:30 p.m.
Tickets: $46.50-$59 from the Royal McPherson box office (250-386-6121) or
Jessi Cruickshank announced her Up Close and Too Personal tour of Canada two years ago, weeks before the pandemic wiped clean off the slate any and all live events.
After several postponements, the 91原创-raised, Los Angeles-based comedian and TV host is finally completing dates on the rescheduled tour, which stops Friday at the Royal Theatre. “People are excited to get out, and have a night out from the kids, and put pants on and share a communal experience, laugh together and have a drink. It feels like a night out people have been waiting for for years.”
Repeated delays meant double the work for Cruickshank, as the material conceived and written for her 2020 jaunt is long outdated. Only one routine from the original run is included on her new tour, as her previous version of the show was written when her brood included twin sons (now five years old) and not her third child, who was born 16 months ago.
For someone who specializes in slice-of-motherhood failures and foibles, a new baby was a gold mine of material waiting to be written. Cruickshank has no problem making herself the butt of any joke, either: She calls herself and the other moms who who had kids during the pandemic “dummies,” for adding extra pressure — such as protective masks, hand sanitizer, and rapid testing — to what amounts to a stressful job on the best of days.
“My home life has changed, and so much of my audience is women with young kids. I try to speak to the experience we’ve all had in the last two or three years.”
Cruickshank said the majority of fans who come to see her perform are “ladies, gay gentlemen, and gentlemen who were dragged there on a date night,” each of whom can find something applicable in her set. But while Cruickshank’s comedy consists of many real-life misadventures, the majority revolve around parenting, marriage and the impact parenting has on her marriage to television editor and producer Evan Gatica.
“Men have a great time [at these shows],” she said. “The women who come without their partners always tell me they want me to come back so they can bring their husbands. It’s a really fun night out for couples.”
Her delivery is salty and sarcastic, but with a subtle tenderness; Cruickshank isn’t cruel, despite life for a new mother being unforgivably so on occasion.
“When I was pregnant, I was seeing women prancing through fields [on Instagram] with floral wreaths on their heads, this vision of motherhood presented to me on the Internet. But when I found out I was having identical twins, and they were premature, I didn’t get to take my cute photos in the hospital. That vision of what my life would be like as a mother came crumbling down, and I had to rebuild my own version of it — which turned out to be very funny.”
She has enjoyed on-camera success with networks such as CTV, E!, The CW, and CBC, all of which were pre-dated by her early-career breakthrough alongside partner Dan Levy, later of Schitt’s Creek fame. Her successful four-year run on MTV Canada was spent with Levy under The After Show banner, during which the two friends, who were unknowns at the time of their hiring, served as off-colour commentators on a series of live recap programs for early-2000s reality shows like Laguna Beach and The Hills.
Though frivolous at first, the after-shows (which skewered and celebrated reality shows during the format’s infancy) honed the comic timing of Cruickshank to a razor-sharp point. That same delivery is alive and well today on her “imperfect guide to motherhood,” the Facebook Watch video-on-demand comedy series New Mom, Who Dis?, now in its fourth season.
With a background that includes time with high school classmates Seth Rogen and Nathan Fielder in an all-male 91原创 comedy troupe — she was the only female member — Cruickshank said she never imagined her comedy career would crest on the strength of motherhood material; her comedy skillset suggested something bolder, with more button-pushing.
That said, she believes there is some intrinsic worth to her routine, which mocks and makes light of motherhood while celebrating and championing mothers.
“I’ve been a comedian my whole life and career, but I don’t know what I would joke about without having three kids,” Cruikshank said with a laugh. “This is the funniest sh-t of my life, and it has provided me with so much material.”
