YukYuk's doubles the laughter

By Samantha Bayard

baya0004@algonquincollege.com

Two Ontario-based comics named Peter rocked a roaring all-ages audience at The Observatory as part of a regular YukYuk’s supplied evening of comedy for free.

Headliner Pete Zedlacher is a regular to YukYuk’s Ottawa and Just for Laughs Montreal. His show was opened on Sept. 24 by Peter Gunstra, a Westboro native just starting out.

The Ob was filled to capacity and the back became standing room only by it’s 9 p.m. start.

Zedlacher’s act showed off his voice control, his physical comedy and his willingness to take risks.  Gunstra, though far less physical, demonstrated his youthful exuberance and related to the crowd, being a recent Queen’s mechanical engineering graduate himself.

The evening went longer than expected when Zedlacher responded to the crowd’s demand for several encores.  It was made especially interesting because of a heckler in the audience.

Angele Gee, a second-year computer programming student sat at the table with the night’s heckler and sympathized for him. She would not want to take on a professional, whose job is to be daring and confident, herself.

Mark-Andre Imbeault, a first-year journalism student, said he thought the show was “really good; he took it just far enough to make us laugh.” Imbeault said he felt Zedlacher’s jokes seemed familiar most likely from television.

Zedlacher related to the audience, varying his topics from Tim Horton’s in Kandahar to the beloved Pingu. It was a rather Canadian-themed evening to which the crowd responded favourably. He ended with a clever mime montage reviewing the highlights of the evening.

Zedlacher is a 36-year-old native to Wawa, Ontario who is engaged and has a pug who he describes as his fur child.

“My special spin is I am a performance-driven spin, I’m a goof on stage.  I won’t be embarrassed to go, to make an ass of myself,” said Zedlacher.

He explained as part of his nomadic lifestyle he will be on tour with Just for Laughs in a few weeks doing a coast to coast theatre tour which hits Ottawa on Nov. 1 at the National Arts Center.

Peter Gunstra works as a professional from nine to five and moonlights as a stand-up, at least for the last year and a half.

“Comedy is a night job. I just like working a lot so, they work well together. I make a good amount of money at my night job; I work for beer money which is convenient because I usually work at bars.”