New downtown club is a laughing matter
By Lavanya Ramanathan and Fritz Hahn
Friday, Aug 19, 2011
New bars and restaurants open almost every week in Washington. A new comedy club, on the other hand, arrives with about the same frequency as a solar eclipse.
Riot Act Comedy Theater, which opened last week near Chinatown, isn't just a new comedy club in a tony, touristy part of town - it's a cavernous one, with capacity for nearly 400 people in its underground theater space.
"We want to be the bridge between the club and a theater" such as Lisner Auditorium or Warner Theatre, says John Xereas, who co-owns Riot Act with Marjorie Heiss and Geoff Dawson. Dawson is the man behind a mini empire of casual bars, including Buffalo Billiards, Iron Horse Tap Room and Rocket Bar, but he has never run a comedy club. His partner may have a better handle on that aspect of the business: Xereas used to run a little club himself.
Its name? Riot Act.
Xereas opened his first comedy venue - after more than a decade at the D.C. Improv - in early 2007 in the former 14th Street NW jazz club HR-57. It was tiny (with capacity for 100), perpetually crowded and a home for a different brand of comedian than you might find elsewhere - female comics, gay comics, up-and-coming locals. From the beginning, it drew outsize crowds, and Riot Act closed within a year so Xereas could search for a new venue.
"When celebrities talk about the good old days when they were performing smoky clubs back in the '60s - that's what [the first] Riot Act felt like," says comedian Chris Doucette, who ran the regularly sold-out monthly showcase Gay-larious at the narrow club on 14th Street. "Because of its small size, it created this really great energy, because people were packed in to see a show. It felt like the beginnings of something really great."
Gay-larious, along with other popular acts such as the Geek Comedy Tour (with "Stars Wars" jokes and the like) and a trio of Muslim American comedians known as Allah Made Me Funny, are returning to the new Riot Act.
Those performances, which could draw an audience that doesn't typically frequent comedy clubs, may ultimately set Riot Act apart from the city's other comedy venues. (The club actually welcomes the under-21 set, but that isn't a license to bring little ones; on our visits, the comedians tended to work blue, to the crowds' delight.)
But the big question is whether the new theater can re-create the intimate experience that Doucette and others loved in the little club.
Riot Act is in an office building at Ninth and E streets NW. The foyer and bar, with their plain white walls, large plate-glass windows, industrial-design office carpet and metal-tube furniture, have all the charm of a car dealership crossed with a suburban business hotel. The main performance space resembles a hotel conference room with a 20-foot ceiling. The generic tables and chairs that run in neat rows across the room and along the walls do nothing to lessen the fear that you're about to attend a time-share presentation.
Riot Act's schedule is loaded with national comics working the club circuit, including Dick Gregory and Paul Mooney, meaning Riot Act is an instant rival to the city's venerable D.C. Improv and the Arlington Cinema 'N' Drafthouse, which have cornered the market on alt-comics who draw younger crowds, from TJ Miller to Janeane Garofalo to "Flight of the Conchords'" infatuated fangirl Kristen Schaal.
Reggie Melbrough, a D.C. comedian who hosts a regular showcase at Wonderland, welcomes the new club, saying that rising local comedians have felt stuck at the back of the queue for stage time, since there is was only one major club in Washington: "There are good comics just waiting," he says. "There are enough good comics and up-and-coming comics . . . to support two comedy clubs."
Xereas says comedy shows are only part of the equation: Riot Act will be home base for a comedy school and will host a regular open mike on Tuesday nights. There are three movie screens that might be used for screening a weekend football game or by a comedian with a multimedia act.
Food and drink: Because of its location in a pristine new building, the club doesn't have permission to fry food, so this may be the first comedy club to serve "healthful" eats. On the limited menu now: quesadillas, a sandwich and a hummus plate, as well as braised short ribs (at $20, the priciest dish on the menu). The short list of beer options - ranging from bottles of Corona to 21st Amendment's Back in Black IPA on draft - are between $6 and $7; the wines by the glass are a buck or two more. The cocktail menu eschews exotic fare in favor of straightforward versions of a Manhattan, a Cosmo and a margarita, all of which are $9.
On the schedule: Todd Rexx, through Sunday ($15-$17); Dick Gregory, Aug. 28 ($20); Gay-larious, Sept. 7 ($15); Allah Made Me Funny, Sept. 14-17 ($20-$25); Paul Mooney, Sept. 21-25 ($20-$25).
What does it cost? Ticket prices will start at $10 for the open mikes and run to about $20 for better-known comedians. As with many other comedy clubs, there's also a two-item food and drink minimum.
