Sometimes stand-ups claim artistic liberty to fabricate certain chapters of their autobiography or make overblown caricatures of their family members. But you don’t get that feeling from New York’s Ross Bennett, who can conceivably tie most his routine back to the quarrelsome relationship with his curt, simpleminded drill-sergeant father. Bennett’s delivery sounds like honest confession—a David Sedaris kind of storytelling without the irony—as he explains to you how he dropped out of West Point to become a comedian, a decision his father considered like “dropping out of the human race to be a cloud.” Another confession is his retelling of the day JFK was assassinated, when his weeping third-grade teacher dismissed the class, saying, “‘Children, go home, your parents will have something to tell you.’ I went up to my father and said, ‘Dad, Mrs. Lamb is crying, and she says there is something you want to tell me.’ And my father said, ‘she’s a liar and a whore.’” (Andy Seifert)
March 31-April 5, at Zanies, 1548 N. Wells, (312)337-4027.
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