Review: Elbows up! Second City’s newest revue pokes fun at the present moment | Canada Voices

• Title: Duel Citizens
• Written and performed by: Conor Bradbury, Coko Galore, Devon Henderson, Christian Smith, Tiyawnda, Scott Yamamura
• Director: Brandon Hackett
• Company: The Second City
• Venue: Second City Mainstage
• City: Toronto
• Year: Tickets on sale for performances up to Nov. 16, 2025

It’s unlikely that U.S. President Donald Trump is reading this review. But on the off chance he is: Hi, Donald. You might want to head to the Second City in Toronto before attempting to annex Canada.

The Second City’s newest mainstage revue is the ultimate masterclass on Canadians, peppered with jokes about how we eat, play and connect with each other. Director Brandon Hackett has assembled a tight sketch show that reacts to the unresolved trade war – and makes its thoughts on Mr. Trump obvious from the very beginning – but don’t worry. Duel Citizens isn’t a mere slog through ripped-from-the-headlines fodder.

Instead, the show uses laughs, props and barrels of quick wit to make its message clear: Elbows up, Canada. And seriously: Back off, Mr. President.

It’s clear early on how the night will unfold, when standout comedians Devon Henderson and Conor Bradbury chat over an invisible fence, ostensibly neighbours in some quaint subdivision. “Howdy, neighbour to the south!,” chimes Henderson. Bradbury, laying the American brashness on thick, comes out swinging: “Give me your house!”

That’s the most overt in a series of sketches that play on the tension between Canada and its southern counterpart. Though Duel Citizens frequently deviates toward sillier, more lighthearted fare, it periodically comes back to politics, using topical scenes as scaffolding for a slick revue with only a few flat beats.

When we meet a middle-aged woman named Sophie, played with a thick Quebec accent by Henderson, it’s hard not to giggle, especially as Sophie laments her ex, who made her move to Ottawa, of all places. The laughs come easily, too, when members of the Canadian Armed Forces are told to prepare for an American invasion, and they respond haphazardly, slapping their thighs and badly executing push-ups.

And so it goes. Duel Citizens manages to find an impressive amount of levity in this disquieting political moment, all the while celebrating the things that make Canada special: our exclusive sweet chili heat-flavoured Doritos, for one, and the French language. More often than not, Duel Citizens feels like a pep rally for urban Canadian pride.

But there is, of course, more to the revue than its politics, and each performer has at least one memorable sketch. Tiyawnda’s is a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it bit involving a hamster; Christian Smith’s is an extended sequence about being a new dad, involving an audience participant tasked with playing Grandpa. Coko Galore’s song about the erotic edge to watching TV takes a few minutes to get cooking, but it sticks its landing by the second or third chorus.

Sketches about DEI initiatives, funny a few months ago but eerily timely now, play well, if a little long – Scott Yamamura, Tiyawnda and Galore find big humour in the notion of “diversity hires,” even if the topic is a little more sensitive now than it might have been when first written.

But that’s one of the beauties of sketch comedy as a means of live performance: It can acknowledge the present moment more quickly than, say, scripted theatre or film. By its very nature, comedy requires an agile response time, as well as the studied chops to refine a joke into its purest, most durable form.

At the rate the U.S. government is currently going, the gags in Duel Citizens run the risk of aging out of relevance over the next few months. But it’s sketch comedy, and performed by improvisers: If need be, they can rejig it.

Elise Wattman makes some inspired choices on the musical side of Duel Citizens, interspersing jangly pop music with sound effects and, fittingly, Gustav Holst’s Jupiter (which, in the early 2000s, was used as the backdrop to American composer Z. Randall Stroope’s patriotic hymn Homeland). Wattman keeps up with the onstage antics and leaves space for the unknown – how an audience participant might search for their words, perhaps, or how they might stumble into her nook to the right of the Second City Mainstage. She handles it all like a pro.

There’s room yet for this crop of Duel Citizens to find their footing in the show – on opening night, the ensemble stepped on quite a few laughs, meaning punchlines were tricky to hear amidst the chatter, and there are a few timing issues yet to squelch.

But on the whole, Duel Citizens makes a compelling case for spending Canadian dollars on Canadian comedy, and by doing so, sends the White House a message: Canada, in all its quirkiness, is ours to defend. Paws off.

In the interest of consistency across all critics’ reviews, The Globe has eliminated its star-rating system in film and theatre to align with coverage of music, books, visual arts and dance. Instead, works of excellence will be noted with a critic’s pick designation across all coverage. (Television reviews, typically based on an incomplete season, are exempt.)