From: Time Out New York, July 13-20, 2000, P. 77

Saturday Night Specials

SNL's Tina Fey and Rachel Dratch have found a hilarious way to spend their summer vacations.

By Greg Emmanuel

A woman sits alone on stage, her jaw clenched and slightly askew. She looks like she’s in pain - and in fact, she reveals, she’s been mauled by a puma. That’s odd enough, but when a former Playboy centerfold bearing flowers stops in for a visit, things get really strange - and extremely hilarious. Welcome to the twisted comedic minds of Rachel Dratch and Tina Fey. The puma-and-Playboy bit is part of their new sketch how, Dratch and Fey, by far the funniest thing to be found on any New York comedy stage this summer (they will appear this week at the Upright Citizens Brigade Theater Monday 17 and Wednesday 19).

If comedy had a graduate school, it would be Chicago’s Second City. Dratch and Fey met and performed together at the venerable institution that has spawned the careers of talents from the likes of Mike Nichols and Chris Farley. Fey left Chicago in 1997 to join the writing team at Saturday Night Live, and last year, she was named the first female head writer on the long-running show, known in the past as something of a boys club. The two have been working together again since last fall, when Dratch became a featured performer on SNL. (You may have seen her impersonating Calista Flockhart or playing one of the kids from Boston with Jimmy Fallon.) “I’ve always liked Tina’s sensibilities,” says Dratch. “She just surprises me a lot onstage-in a good way. She has a little bit of an edge to her whereas I’m a little bit more goofy.” This difference between the two is highlighted in the opening of their fast-paced one-hour show: Dratch comes onstage to announce that she will be performing a one-woman show about the obscure historical Edwina Garth Burnham. Simultaneously, Fey takes the stage to perform her one-woman show - of “cunt poems.” It’s these incouragous moments that make Dratch and Fey so refreshing. “The type of characters that I like to play are more world-weary and bitter,” says Fey. “Rachel plays the more hopeful, wide-eyed type.” Both are equally gifted in their ability to play a number of very different characters with minimal props (although Scotch tape is used to great effect in one skit mocking plastic surgery), relying instead on different voices and body language.

The show came together almost as quickly as one of their sketches unfolds. when they decided last summer to do something as a pair (Dratch was bored and Fey was on hiatus from SNL), they gave themselves just two weeks to write before debuting in Chicago. The show is mostly made up of material the two improvised in rehearsal, along with a couple of pieces that Fey wrote for SNL that never aired and a couple that Dratch wrote herself. Those rehearsals bore some sidesplitting fruit, such as a bit called “Mr. Willoughby,” in which the two play Jane Austen-era women who are “extolling” the virtues of an eligible bachelor, Mr. Willoughby (really an ugly creep, but they act like he’s a real catch). “His eyebrows are most expressive,” says Fey dreamily, in a refined English accent. “Especially the top one.” Dratch later adds with a lovers glee: “He reeks of urine!” In “The Lottery” - a sketch that was rescued from SNL’s graveyard of unaired bits - Fey plays a white-trash thug who has some grand plans for the money he’s won (“I’m gonna buy the rights to Coke, so I can change the name to Ape Semen!”). “It actually belongs to NBC,” says Fey of the sketch. “I mentioned it to [executive producer] Lorne [Michaels]. I said, “‘Are you gonna come see our show? Because you own part of it.’” Since both Dratch and Fey have pretty prestigious day jobs, they’re not necessarily hungry for that “big break”, but they are anxious to see where this show might lead them. They hope first to extend the current run at UCB through the summer, and they will be performing in L.A. next week for various industry types. “The fantasy might be to get some sort of TV special,” says Dratch. “But I don’t know how well it would translate.” She adds: “At SNL, you don’t have control over your show. So it’s been fun to just be able to do what you want.