Sunnyvale ran out of booze

By Quinn Damery

dame0013@algonquincollege.com

At 8 p.m., students were lined up in the alley outside the locked doors to the Ob. By 9 p.m. they were crowded into seats, booths and all the way across the bar, taking their eyes away from the empty stage in furtive glances to check the score of the Sens game.

At 9:15 p.m., the first lilting notes of that familiar jingle were drowned out by the boisterous hollering of Algonquin’s rowdiest.

Randy and Mr. Lahey had arrived.

The supporting stars from the Showcase hit Trailer Park Boys, fresh off a stint at Yuk Yuk’s in Toronto the night before, were warmly received by the capacity crowd at the Ob on Nov. 17. The mostly male crowd could barely be restrained from getting in on the act, often shouting catchphrases and in-jokes from the show.

“Some places, people get thrown out,” said Patrick Roach, who plays Randy. “The only time [a show] gets bad is when people are too drunk and are talking loudly. It ruins it for everyone around them.”

Despite drunkenly carousing their way through their set, Roach admits that he and co-star John Dunsworth, who plays trailer park drunk Mr. Lahey, don’t drink much themselves during the show.

Roach and Dunsworth’s act included sales pitches for homemade inventions and a misguided Batman sketch that ran out of steam long before it finished. There were singalongs that sometimes faltered and a drunken campaign to elect Jim Lahey for Prime Minister, but it was any mention of familiar residents of Sunnyvale Trailer Park that drew the loudest response from the crowd.

“It’s hilarious,” said Colin McKay, a first-year horticulture technician student. “I’d been to [see them] last year.”

“I liked it. I liked Randy’s body, he’s sexy. I liked his belly dancing,” said Brittany Smith, a second-year recreation and leisure services student.

The Trailer Park Boys have become a Canadian institution over the course of eight seasons and one movie, but Dunsworth and Roach are at a loss to explain their impact.

“This type of comedy warms peoples’ cockles,” said Dunsworth. “A lot of people don’t get it, and they don’t have to get it. Conservatives don’t get it.”

“People that watch the show get a kick out of us acting like morons,” added Roach.

Dunsworth, who is fiercely political, lamented the dire state of the media and the world, feelings he only hinted at while onstage.

“It’s unbelievable that the world is being run by people who aren’t leaders,” he said. “Why aren’t we talking about possibility in the world?”

Then, slumping in his seat and waving an aimless finger in the air, he allowed Lahey to add some slurred wisdom to his rant.

“The shit winds are blowin’.”

Unfortunately for its fans, TPB is coming to an end after an hour-long Christmas special and another movie, which Roach estimates will be in theatres next summer.