Stage

What: The Skyline’s The Limit
Where: The Second City Theatre, One
York Street, 110 Harbour St.
When: Now, until Sun., Aug. 27
Highlight: Andy Assaf as demonic,
abandoned, mid-2000s computer
confronting its disinterested owner.
Rating: NNNN (out of 5)
Why you should go: Cutting-edge
comedy with a political bite that’s not afraid
to be goofy.

The Skyline’s The Limit, Second City’s latest revue opened this week, and it’s is edgy, entertaining, smart, feminist, racially

attuned — and not afraid to go for laughs with goofy dancing from time to time.

The cast members find the fun in the police-funding fight, share hilarious inner, dark thoughts of the publicly “perfect” woman and drop astute, sharply funny observations from the BIPOC side of the racial divide.

And they routinely dance around like fools and pull hilariously goofy faces.

None of the progressive topics feel forced and always work for the laughs as well as the political points. The biting commentary on prioritizing police funding over, well, everything else draws a roar from the crowd that grows upon contemplation of the edgy and astute scene.

The cast of mostly Second City veterans is uniformly excellent, with physical comedy expert Hannah Spear at the centre of many of the best sketches.

Her creepy and annoying new subway “friend” who won’t leave another transit rider alone, even though the latter is immersed in his ear pods, is hilarious while her mugging helps drive the excellent policing bit. And her dark and hilarious inner thoughts, which she keeps hidden from the rest of the world as she tries to be “The Perfect Woman,” draws howls of recognition from the opening-night audience.

Andy Assaf is another standout who has a hilarious scene as an ageing computer from the early 2000s that’s abandoned in the basement by an owner who’s moved on to faster equipment. It name-checks a host of early-aughts nostalgia and its rage and disgust at what its then-teenaged operator made it watch is gut-grabbingly funny.

The show’s “other” Andy, Andy Hull — also a member of The Sketchersons — nails it

as an incensed office worker hilariously and demonically berating his coworkers for not recycling properly.

PHATT al and Nkasi Ogbonnah take their comedy straight to the edge as two actors of colour euphemistically being urged by a white director to make their performances increasingly “more Black.”

A sweet, cuddly lesbian love scene between Ogbonnah and Jillian Welsh draws as many moist “awes” from the crowd as chuckles.

This latest revue from Second City is the first new work to premiere in the still very new location, in a condo tower at One York Street on the waterfront. The laugh-packed show has enough edge to make you forget the squeaky-clean setting, with a talented cast that makes it easy to imagine you’re back at the original, legendary Toronto Second City on Lombard Street.