Hitting <i>Very </i>Close to Home : Comedian Ritch Shydner’s Wife Can Relate to His Act . . . It’s Her Life

Even in a perfect world, relationships are tough. But when your spouse is traveling around the country telling thousands of people a month how your relationship is going, it can get really sticky.

Kay Shydner knows the feeling well. Her life with husband Ritch gets a regular public airing in his one-man comedy show “The Romantic Adventures of Canyon Man,” at the Improv in Brea this month.

In it, he talks about the dangers of keeping old “art” photos of former girlfriends around, or of presenting a bathroom scale as a birthday gift. Though they come from the perspective of a bumbling male, the observations often hit home with both sexes.

But unlike Shydner’s old stand-up routines, this one is largely based in fact--real arguments, real breakups, real reconciliations.

“It’s kind of strange,” says Kay, who has been involved with Shydner for 6 1/2 years and married to him for four. “It’s kind of weird for me to walk into a club after he’s been there a while. People walk up like they feel they know me. It can be disconcerting at times.

“But it goes with the territory,” she continued, on the phone from Sherman Oaks, where she and Shydner live with their 3-year-old daughter, Savannah. “Like when he went on ‘Letterman’ and told the nation I was late with my period. You kind of roll with it. It doesn’t bother me. Now and then I’ll tell him to get a joke out of the act because it’s a little too personal for me, and he usually does.”

The routine stems from stories Shydner would tell offstage, to friends.

“I was at a point when I was doing joke joke joke, and most everything in the act was about relationships,” he recalls. “Everyone was doing male-female stuff. I needed to take this one step further. I was telling stories outside the act, and the closer to the bone you are, the more reaction you’re going to get. I thought, ‘These things have to go on the stage. That’s real life. That’s the direction I should be going.’ ”

He came up with Canyon Man, a character who might best be described as relationship impaired.

“A lot of that was my attitude before the relationship” with Kay, Shydner said. In any case, “people knew the Canyon Man character and related to it.”

Does Canyon Man still live in the Shydner home?

“I wouldn’t still be here if he did,” Kay answered, laughing. “Like everyone, we have our lapses. But we’re both really committed to making it work. The show’s a testament; (relationships) are a struggle for everyone.”

When Shydner isn’t traveling (which he does about two weeks a month these days) or working on “Canyon Man” (he generally is pleased with it but continues to tweak it), he is busy trying to expand his horizons. That includes co-writing a movie script (“basically a love story”) and a TV pilot (“about a big sprawling family, like the Waltons thing”) and rewriting his “Male/Female Dictionary.”

“I don’t know how much more stand-up I’ll do,” he said. “I’ve done stand-up a long time, and I’ve given a lot to it. I definitely don’t want to stand up there and do jokes about driving. No ranting and raving, either. There are other ways I want to express myself. If I do another show, it’ll be my wife, daughter and what’s going on there.

“I definitely don’t see myself doing cruise ships in 10 years,” he said. “If you see that happen, you know there’s big trouble in my house.”

His show is going well in Brea after an outstanding engagement in New York City, where its original one-week run lasted four months. The Brea gig is slated to end Oct. 28, but if attendance continues to climb, more time could be added.

“We’ve increased attendance in two weeks significantly,” Shydner said. “So I know people have heard good things about it and are coming in. It’s not for the emotionally squeamish, not for someone who doesn’t want to be in a relationship. A lot of couples come. If just groups of guys came, I’d be in trouble.”

Some fans actually have asked him for advice about their own relationships. But he is quick to point out that he is not, after all, an expert on the subject. “I don’t want to get into giving advice. That’s a dangerous area. (People who do) tend to have a complete mess in their own lives. I (approach relationships) in a funny way so people can relate. I don’t get up there and say, ‘Do what I say and everything will be fine.’ ”

* “The Romantic Adventures of Canyon Man” continues Tuesdays through Sundays at the Improv, 945 E. Birch St., Brea. $7 to $10. (714) 529-7878.