The Roast of Darth Vader at The Ballroom

On May 4^th, a full house at 29^th Street Ball­room wit­nessed a spec­ta­cle in cel­e­bra­tion of a galaxy far, far away. 

The Roast of Darth Vad­er was the fourth of its kind host­ed by Kris Walk­er. Roasts of George Wash­ing­ton, Drac­u­la, and San­ta Claus all pre­cede this one, and like those before it, this roast was also themed around a hol­i­day. The infor­mal Star Wars Day derives from Yoda’s famous ​“may the force be with you”, but that wasn’t the only word­play present this evening as one-lin­ers abound­ed among a stel­lar cast of comics.

The roast itself was book­end­ed by live music. Kick­ing things off was an open­ing com­e­dy rap set by Neil Dorsey as Chew­bac­ca. Dorsey warmed up the crowd with his songs, and when he wasn’t rap­ping, he was ban­ter­ing with the audi­ence and throw­ing can­dy out to any­one lucky enough to catch a piece. I caught an orange star­burst; just a lit­tle some­thing to hold me over for the rest of the show.

After the roast, the audi­ence was treat­ed to both a music video pre­mière and a live set from the night’s can­ti­na band, MoonKill. Aliens play­ing jazz they are not, but a hard rock four-piece is sure­ly more electrifying.

After an excit­ing open­er, mas­ter of cer­e­monies Luke Sky­walk­er (Walk­er) intro­duced the char­ac­ters one by one as they walked down the aisle. The line­up fea­tured Yoda (Mimi Meier), Han Solo (Jason Rodriguez), a Jawa (Enrique Chacón), R2-D2 (Heather Kei­th), Obi Wan Keno­bi (Dil­lon Jar­boe), and the man of the hour Darth Vad­er, who was none oth­er than return­ing roast-ee Sym­ply Courtney.

The bound­ary between who was real­ly being roast­ed, i.e. the char­ac­ter or the com­ic, was non-exis­tent. Many jokes made fun of why ​‘X come­di­an’ was ​‘Y char­ac­ter’. Meier was teased for being short like Yoda. Chacón, being a gener­ic Jawa, was roast­ed by Meier for being as unknown as the anony­mous hood­ed alien species. Jar­boe likened the tin foil top of Keith’s home­made R2-D2 cos­tume to a conspiracist’s tin foil hat.

The joke was much more on the come­di­ans than it was the char­ac­ters they dressed as, so even a Star Wars lay­man didn’t feel left out. Enough niche ref­er­ences were thrown in for the nerds but if you were only there to hear zingers you came away satisfied.

As is the nature of a roast there was plen­ty more said that can’t be typed here. With a degree of sep­a­ra­tion as an observ­er, and with­out the con­text of the chem­istry between the comics, talk­ing about the ​‘mean­er’ jokes myself doesn’t do jus­tice to how they were deliv­ered on stage. I can attest, how­ev­er, that they were hilar­i­ous, no punch­es were pulled, and it was all in good fun just like a good roast should be. If you want to hear the jokes I can’t say, check out the next roast on the 4^th of July.