Wayne Brady: Making it Up!

Join the Brady bunch

By Jamie Helmick

Wayne Brady’s “Making It Up” is not a show for the lazy.

Brady’s not lazy, bounding around the stage with a hands-free microphone, riffing on everything from the risqué to the inane. His assistant, Jonathan Mangum, isn’t lazy, following Brady manically around the stage and tossing off his own laugh-worthy barbs.  And so you, too, cannot be lazy – or the show won’t be half as fun.

From nearly the very beginning of the show, the audience is tapped to provide the fuel for Brady’s irresistible brand of improv humor and if you’re asleep on the job, well, you have no one to blame but yourself.

Held in the Showroom at the Venetian, Brady’s show is an almost intimate experience, where the face you recognize from so many episode of “Whose Line is it Anyway?” (and an unforgettable episode of “Chapelle’s Show”) is pretty close to your own face and he’s looking at you to make things interesting.

Whether Brady is imploring you to talk about yourself so that he and Mangum can create a rock opera (on the spot!) detailing your life story or he’s making fun of the guy in the third row for wearing shorts to the show, there’s no shortage of audience involvement.

Most of Brady’s comedy is obviously made up in the moment and although certain bits may be the same night after night, it’s hard to say exactly how the show will go because it’s hard to predict how your fellow audience members will answer Brady’s queries.

A game where he and Mangum react to the TiVo-modeled commands of one of the band members (the show is soundtracked by a live, five-piece band) is based on a story told by whoever Brady picks out of the crowd. It’s like a sitcom has suddenly been made about some stranger you met in the lobby. It’s funny, and just like anything recorded on TiVo, it can be rewound, played in slow motion or fast-forwarded to get to a good part.

And if calling out prompts from the audience doesn’t quite fulfill your dreams of interacting with Wayne Brady, consider volunteering for the part of the show where audience members are used as props. As Brady and Mangum construct a scene, the audience members on stage are supposed to become the scenery, whether it be a set of swinging doors or a treadmill. Because some on stage catch on quicker than others, it adds another element of surprise and hilarity to the show.

Parts of the audience participation happen before the show even begins – guests are asked to write down a musical artist and the name of a new song from them. Brady then goes on to sing these new classics – a song about tacos sung like Elvis or a song about a homely-looking woman, sung like Justin Timberlake, in an off-the-cuff ride so dead on that you will never look at Prince or U2 the same way again.  

Although the songs are completely ridiculous, it’s hard to deny when they’re done that Brady is a great singer - and it’s clearly not the first time he’s been told that. After all the laughing, Brady slows it down a little bit to sing, in earnest, hits from James Brown, Luther Vandross and Sammy Davis Jr.

It’s a little bit of everything, which is exactly what Brady says you’re in for at the start of the show – just don’t think you’re not going to have to pull your weight.