‘Children’ anything but slow

“Styx, you are the next Messiah.”

No, Jesus isn’t back just yet, but according to Slow Children at Play, Boston University’s sketch comedy troupe, the Messiah is College of Communication freshman Tomas Watson incarnate in a new sketch called “God.”

The Slow Kids first formed in 1995 by four men who were rejected by Spontaneous Combustion, BU’s improvisational comedy group. Since then, they have maintained a tradition of writing and performing comedy, calling each other by random (yet very meaningful) nicknames and enjoying the fame that comes with working in sketch comedy.

“You will not believe the groupies that sketch comedy attracts!” remarked COM freshman Jeremy Bent, better known as Wolfhaus, his Slow Kids nickname. Their brand of humor certainly called for a lot of laughter. “And make sure you use the word ‘talented’ as much as possible to describe us,’ said Casey Schreiner (Deuce), COM sophomore and treasurer of the Slow Kids.

The group hosts two major BU shows a year and performs at comedy festivals as well as several comedy clubs in and around Boston. Their material is written and performed solely by the members of the troupe. This creates the interesting combination of improvisation and script writing that gives the Slow Kids their unique style.

The group worked on separate sketches in two different groups during their rehearsal, perfecting and editing already existing material, and playing off of one another for new ideas. Jayme Stevens (Stretch), Justin Aclin (Hemlock), Andy Taylor (The Captain) and Bent worked on ideas for their “Cast Away” sketch, mimicking the popular Tom Hanks flick. Mark Lessne (Ghengis), Watson and Schreiner created a new sketch called “Square Dancing.” Make no mistake; the Slow Kids have no problem exploiting poor southern bastards who prance around in barns for fun. Politically incorrect? Perhaps. But very funny, indeed.

And “making funny” is what the Slow Kids are all about. “We mix up all the greatest parts of comedy,” said Lessne, a college of Arts and Sciences junior. In “Square Dancing,” Lessne, Watson and Schreiner wrote the dialogue and actions of two extremely bitter, married square-dance callers. “Ya’ll enjoying the hoe down? And when I say hoe, I mean my wife!” shouts Lessne in a burst of inspiration.

And they aren’t worried about political correctness either. If they were, they wouldn’t make the line, “You’re the best square dancers that I see, raise your hand if you like child pornography!” seem hysterically amusing. If Trey Parker and Matt Stone could make Sadaam Hussein and Satan into horrifically twisted gay lovers in “South Park: Bigger, Longer, and Uncut,” and still be hilarious, they’re in for some competition from the Slow Kids. “By the time this is done, this will probably be a completely different sketch … probably about abortion!” the group joked. Bent also kidded, “Shame is a big part of the Slow Kids.”

Although the Slow Kids President Andy Taylor says the best part about sketch comedy is “the chicks and the drugs,” it seems the real perks are in the highly entertaining one-liners that eventually spawn a completely new idea. While they were writing the script for “Square Dancing,” the group somehow segued into a completely new topic — “how to make Styx commit suicide” or “the God sketch.” Using several papers rolled into a megaphone, Lessne played the role of God, Watson himself, and Deuce someone who was frantically trying to jot all the funny lines down before they were forgotten.

The Slow Kids will hold their next BU performance on Saturday, April 7 at 8 p.m. in the Armory’s Underground Theatre. Admission is $3.

“It’s really fun to screw around for two hours at rehearsal and then perform the stuff we come up with,” noted Lessne, soon after he boomed through his paper “megaphone,” “Styx, I want you to go to your mother’s closet, put her panties on your head and draw a smiley face in mascara on your bum. Then, jump off Morse Auditorium and plummet to martyrdom!”