Stand-Up Crashes Into ‘90s Reality : Comedy: A glut of clubs faces attendance falloff due to recession, cable and mediocre talent.

Anyone looking for evidence that the comedy biz is changing need only peek ahead to Jan. 12, when the Brea Improv brings in Finis Henderson for a whole month.

First of all, the Improv (like most local comedy clubs) usually brings in comics for one-week stands. Second, Henderson isn’t really a comic at all--he’s a musical impressionist, someone who offers dead-on takes on everyone from Michael Jackson to Frank Sinatra.

And that’s no booking fluke. Another “one-person show,” this one starring comic Ritch Shydner, comes to the Irvine Improv for two weeks this month. The Brea Improv recently closed a weeklong engagement of the “Three Headed Comic,” in which Doug Benson, Don Barnhart and Jim Hope bring a tag-team approach to the traditional three-comic lineup. And “Mothers and Other Goddesses,” a revue-style show starring Edie Matthews and Maree Catalano, played every Monday in November at Bruce Baum’s Comedy Crib in Fullerton.

In the ‘80s, stand-up comedy was hailed as the new rock ‘n’ roll, and monologuists were the ones who practiced stand-up in its purest form. Comics and comedy clubs were a growth industry, but now the business of being funny has finally met the realities of the more austere ‘90s.

“People in the industry are just strapped,” said Barry Weintraub, a comic and San Francisco radio host who also publishes Comedy USA, an industry trade directory that lists both comics and comedy clubs. “We’re sensing that more than ever this year.”

Nationally, club attendance has fallen sharply at even the prestige venues, a situation blamed not only on a delayed reaction to the nation’s economic woes, but also on everything from too much stand-up on cable TV to too many mediocre, sound-alike comics.

The result, say many observers, is a shakeout among clubs and performers and a new premium on variety skills (such as juggling and ventriloquism) that used to be shunned by comedy purists.

Improv clubs in Brea and Irvine were down in attendance about 40% to 50% from April to September last year, according to manager Robert Hartman, although audiences started picking up again after the presidential election. Big names have continued to do well, Hartman said--popular comic Dennis Wolfberg recently sold out a weeklong engagement in Brea--but audiences for comedians without that level of name recognition have been down.

As for the rest of the 15-club Improv chain, “We’re definitely off, there’s no doubt about it,” said owner and impresario Budd Friedman. “There aren’t that many guys out there who can really put (customers) in the seats.”

In Los Angeles, the spring riots contributed to a general drop-off in business, said Jan Maxwell Smith, owner of Igby’s Comedy Cabaret in West Los Angeles. “The combination of the recession and the physical fear of going out” have contributed to a year in which audiences are down about 50% from past levels, Smith said.

Again, big-name comics (such as George Carlin) have drawn well, but “business has not come back to pre-riot levels,” Smith said. The club has had to resort to “papering”--that is, offering free or discount tickets on certain nights to pump up alcohol sales, in an attempt to at least break even. Still, “this has not been a break-even year,” Smith said.

Comics themselves are hurting as well. While an elite corps of big-name comedians continues to draw crowds, many experienced but lesser-known comics are finding it harder to make a living.

“I remember when I was starting out, it felt like there was a handful of comedians and thousands of places to perform. Now, it feels like the other way around,” said Reno Goodale, a comic from Hollywood who has put 10 years into the craft.

“There was a time when I could be out (touring) three weeks out of the month, easily. Now it’s more like one week, or two.”

Goodale thinks the overexposure of comedy on TV is a big part of the problem. Cable TV especially is heavy with stand-up shows.

“I think people are much less likely to go outdoors and pay a cover charge when they can see the same guy on television for free,” Goodale said. Also, he added, “people have become a bit desensitized to comedy. They’re looking for something a bit different, anything but a guy with a plaid jacket and a microphone.”

TV is “burning out the industry,” agreed Kenny AAbrey, a comic who lives in Garden Grove. The onslaught of comics on television, coupled with the glut of one-night comedy “clubs” in bars and hotels, has contributed to comedy overload and a general lowering of the stand-up standard.

“We’re kind of wedged in between Monday Night Football and mud wrestling,” AAbrey said. “From my point of view, the problem is, as long as comedians are used to pimp alcohol, you’re going to be seeing comics who have a tremendous grasp of the obvious.”

As clubs have turned to papering and other ways to get people to come in, the general quality of comics has dropped, Weintraub agreed. “What the clubs get are bodies to buy drinks,” he explained. “It’s no longer people who love comedy as much as people who are looking for something to do.”

The result, he said, is comics who cater to a “lower common denominator.” Whatever the cause, the public’s declining interest in live comedy is creating renewed interest in variety-type entertainment as a way of breaking up the steady stream of straight monologuists. In fact, if you listen to club owners and others in the comedy business these days, sooner or later you’ll hear the term “new vaudeville,” the current catch phrase for people who mix laughs with juggling, magic, ventriloquism, musical spoofs or impressions.

Among purists, such acts (along with prop comics) used to be considered the bottom feeders of the comedy-food chain. A few years back, straight monologuists were the kings of what was considered cutting-edge performance art. Now, old-fashioned show-biz skills are making a comeback as club owners have discovered a new appreciation for old tricks.

‘It doesn’t mean that monologuists are going to go away,” said Smith, owner of Igby’s. “I just think there’s a great opportunity for the performer who does more than straight stand-up.”

A shakeout was inevitable, says Goodale. Cable TV is going to push the business “to its next evolutionary stage, like the Ice Age killed off the dinosaurs,” Goodale said. “The clubs are going to have to evolve some way, to bring people back.”