Funny business in the south metro

Tammy Nerby of Richfield has worked the stand-up comedy circuit for 18 years, and while she noticed live comedy attendance take a dip in the '90s, she thinks things are changing.

"I just go by the turnout," she said. "There are more people in little places packing it in. Things are turning into microcomedy. People would like to stay in their neighborhoods."

Tammy performs regularly at MinneHaHa Comedy Club in Burnsville, the brainchild of Michael Orensteen. At the young comedy club in the basement of Carbone's (formerly Anthony's, and before that Benchwarmer Bob's), visitors forgo a night of Comedy Central to watch live shows while drinking beer and eating hamburgers at candlelit tables.

Orensteen, a former pilot laid off after 9/11, was working at Home Depot when he dropped in on an open mic night. "I just kind of got the bug," he said. He worked briefly with a comedy start-up in Detroit, which made him think there might be potential for clubs for various sites in Minnesota, including the southern suburbs.

"The people south of the river don't want to cross the river," he said.

Orensteen started setting up shows at Tavern on the Ave in Mankato three years ago and started booking shows at Maple Tavern in Maplewood in July. He opened the Burnsville location last October, and he gets the crowd warmed up at the various locations as the emcee.

"Mike's done a great job with his Burnsville room," said Nerby. "He knows his audience. He's packing it in all the time," she said. "It's your average next-door-neighbor suburban Minnesotan. It's new for them, and it's exciting for them."

"I cried my eye make-up off, it was so funny," said Gina Dudziak of Burnsville, who saw Nerby and Elaine Thompson perform and said she loved the interactive nature of the show.

Jake Maher and Abbey Matzek drove from Ellsworth, Wis., to see comics Warren B. Hall and John Stites joke about dating, race issues, ringtones, and Twitter.

"I just always like watching comedy on TV, so I thought it would be a little more personal," Maher said. "They had good energy. They were really upbeat and stuff. It's right up there with anything I've seen on television."

Matzek was more to the point: "I had to go to the bathroom several times to make sure I didn't pee my pants."

Stites said he liked performing in the space. "Instead of having spotlights blaring in your face," he said, "you can see all the faces," which allows him to gauge response and interact with the crowd, he said. "I thought they were intelligent, engaged. They didn't want filth. They wanted clean, cerebral. Warren killed the place."

Ruth Hollahan of Burnsville likes that about it. "I don't like a lot of the F-word stuff," she said at the Stites/Hall show. "This is nice, clean comedy and funny. I think you can have comedy without the four-letter words."

"They were raunchy, but we could handle it," said Lisa Wendt of Eagan, after seeing Nerby and Thompson perform. "We could handle it, and we're Lutheran."