By Tessa Solomon
Absurdist genius Eric André is set to take the Englert’s stage Saturday at 8 p.m. for a standup show.
In a famous segment on the cult Adult Swim series “The Eric André Show,” reality TV star Lauren Conrad flees from the talk show’s set. The reason? Moments before this, her interviewer, the titular André — his afro chemically straightened à la Kat Williams — vomited onto his desk.
At the sight of the creamy, white stream flooding down his chin, Conrad gags, but she doesn’t scramble out — muttering “nope” — until André takes a deep slurp of the fake vomit.
Since the show’s première in 2012, André and stone-faced partner Hannibal Buress have deconstructed the late-night talk show-genre. André’s show is filmed like ’80s-era public access programming, one subversive street skit and absurd D-list celebrity interview at a time.
“I just like being absurd and trying to make the most inept talk-show interview possible,” André said in an interview with the “A.V. Club.” “I’m in character. I’m playing this completely incompetent, schizophrenic talk-show host … I’m taking on a persona, and some people don’t get that.”
The comedian, who has been described by SPIN as “An Andy Kaufman for the Four Loko generation,” will visit the Englert Theater at 8 p.m. Saturday for a (most likely) bodily fluids-free standup show.
“This isn’t the live version of ‘The Eric André Show,’ ” Englert marketing director Aly High said. “This is his standup performance, but expect a similarly high-energy [and] full-impact tenor. There will be no breaking desks, flying ranch dressing, or celebrity interviews — just André, a mic, and his stream of consciousness comedy.”
With only “The Eric André Show” as a reference, though, it would be wise to anticipate the unexpected from the person who masterminded stunts that saw him pose as an escaped slave during a Civil War re-enactment, or drag a “bloody” garbage bag down a New York City street, or crash a MENSA convention in medieval armor.
There is also, of course, the millennial-canonized “Bird Up; the worst show on television,” in which a green morph suit-clad André both harasses and interviews the stranger citizens of New York City.
Every episode — each opening with a frenzied and often nude André decimating the set — fuses a strategies of improv and soft-core torture (skyrocketing the studio’s temperature or having off-screen staff members feign fornication, extending a seven-minute interview by an hour) to elicit outrageous interviews with the baffled stars.
“When you start to make patterns of improv, the audience starts to anticipate what’s going to happen, but Eric André subverts those expectations,” said UI senior and Paperback Rhino improv veteran Ben Kasl. “[That] isn’t always an improv instinct per se, but it’s the same mentality of including the audience but not giving them what they want.”
With rumors from audiences at André’s past standup shows remaining stuck for the duration in a two-hour purgatory of looping theme music, the Englert’s audience members should brace themselves for the unexpected.
“You never want to be mean; you just wanna be absurd or incompetent,” André said in the “A.V. Club” interview. “We’re sociopaths but within reason.”