Comic To Put The ‘Ho-Ho-Ho’ Into Friday Night’s Festivities—

Andrew Kennedy At Edmond Town Hall

By Nancy Crevier

The Annual Tree Lighting at Ram Pasture signals the start of Newtown holiday festivities. This year, residents can extend the fun and high energy of the 6:30 pm outdoor event Friday night, November 30, by following a trail of luminaria up Main Street to Edmond Town Hall Theater where Sandy Hook resident and nationally known comedian Andrew Kennedy will take the stage at 8:30 pm. The show, one of six Treehouse Comedy Productions events scheduled at Edmond Town Hall this year, is the first time that Mr Kennedy has performed in his hometown.

Following his graduation from Southern Connecticut State University with a degree in managerial communications, Mr Kennedy decided to follow the comedic path, starting out at Treehouse Comedy Productions in Norwalk in 1994. “I started out as an impressionist. I do Bill Clinton, Christopher Walken, Al Gore, Gene Wilder, all sorts of people. But I realized that storytelling is really my thing, and everyone relates to it.”

Mr Kennedy spent the first 13 years of his life living in Hong Kong, Venezuela, and Puerto Rico before his family settled in New Canaan. Growing up in exotic locales and the experiences of growing up with a mother from Colombia and a father from England “in the whitest high school in the country” have given him plenty of fodder for his routines, as does day-to-day life with his wife, Amy, and their three children, all under the age of 6. He pokes fun at his mother’s heavy Colombian accent and his father’s very proper British accent, and uses the daily happenings around his home and hometown to round out his show. “My family loves it,” he said, and while he finds himself sharing more and more of his inner thoughts with his audiences than he ever thought possible, it is all done in good taste.

A combination of the energy of comedians Bill Cosby and Brian Regan, Mr Kennedy’s comedy is “PG-13, if you had to rate it,” he said, noting that the November 30 show, nonetheless, is geared toward the 18 and above crowd. “You can have great comedy for kids and you can have great comedy for adults but because both are grounded in such very different realities, you can rarely have great comedy for both,” he said. “When you try to mix the two, it is watered down.”

Without stooping to “blue” humor, though, Mr Kennedy has found that crowds all over the world connect with his observations. “The meat is all about real life. We are all alike. It’s amazing to get the reaction from crowds,” Mr Kennedy said. “Everyone seems to ‘get it,’ even in European countries.”

Devotion to his job takes second tier to devotion to his family, though, he said. “I try to travel no more than ten days a month outside of the local area,” said Mr Kennedy. “When I do go on the road, my kids say, ‘Daddy is going away to make people laugh.’ If I drive somewhere, I pile the family in the car and we all go together. I lead a very unusual life for a comedian,” he said.

When he is not on stage or knee-deep in fatherhood, Mr Kennedy is at work on other projects. A television pilot was unfortunately not picked up by a network, he said, but he is currently writing a one-man show that he would like to take to off-Broadway in New York City. Clips of Mr Kennedy’s half-hour Comedy Central show can be viewed at andrewkennedylive.com, he said, and offer people a peek at his brand of humor.

“I’m thinking that following the tree lighting could be a good thing for my show Friday night,” said Mr Kennedy. “People are going to be in town, and there is time to bring the kids home and tuck them in before heading out again. It could be a good thing. I can’t stress enough how much fun people are going to have if they come out. I’m looking forward to performing here.”

Tickets for Andrew Kennedy At Edmond Town Hall are available by calling 268-5857 or by visiting treehousecomedy.com. Tickets are $19 in advance, $22 at the door, or $25 for VIP tickets.