Tom Lynch

The town is a quarter-mile stretch of gravel, filled with various strip clubs and used-auto-parts stores. There are three mayors. There are multiple police chiefs. And each occupant is as dismal as the next.

In "Wigfield: The Can-Do Town That Just May Not," writers Amy Sedaris, Paul Dinello and Stephen Colbert embrace the hilarity of an oddball American small town. The comedians, who have previously developed two television series for Comedy Central, "Exit 57" and "Strangers With Candy," are preparing to present their book on stage, as they take audiences through a 90-minute tour of a settlement called Wigfield. "This tour that we're doing is a direct result of us not having a book tour," says Stephen Colbert, best known for his appearances as a correspondent on "The Daily Show with Jon Stewart." "We realized that it could be easily expanded into a legitimate evening of theater." When the three Second City alums began performing readings of "Wigfield" in small New York theaters, they noticed a common audience reaction. "The further we got into it," Colbert says, "the more we tested out material to audiences to try to determine whether we were diluting ourselves or whether it was actually funny, the more we saw that we were actually writing a show."

The fictitious Wigfield is a town directly threatened by an imposing state government determined to unleash a nearby dam and flood the streets. Self-aggrandizing journalist Russell Hokes serves as our narrator, and his tour of the town is our inside look at the surreal and misguided. His character, in a comically autobiographical move, is handed a book deal from Hyperion Books to write about Wigfield. The funny trio agrees on Hokes' fraudulence. "When we started writing this we realized that we really didn't know how to write a book, so we created a Russell Hokes, who also doesn't know how to write a book," says Paul Dinello. "Russell Hokes got a book deal from Hyperion, and he's really a bad writer," adds Amy Sedaris, who's also one-half of the "Talent Family," with her writer brother, David, whose duo-penned "Book of Liz" will stage its Chicago premiere in a Roadworks production this May. "He narrates the whole book, so in a way we have him as an excuse if it's poorly written, because he's the bad writer, not us."

The show, comprised of a series of monologues from the town's inhabitants, gives insight into a community in which the people have a difficult time trusting one another. Any similarities between Wigfield and the city where the threesome first tested their funnybone? "The political infighting and power struggle in local government," agrees Colbert. "Wigfield might have a little bit of Maxwell Street in it," Sedaris chimes in.

(2003-04-22)

Also by Tom Lynch

Their TV chariot awaits
It is 3:30, and Carrie has been waiting in line since noon. "I could care less about TV. I'm looking to get married," the young math teacher says.
(2003-04-15)

At the old ballgame
To accompany the first pitch, Southern Illinois University Press has published "Bottom of the Ninth: Great Contemporary Baseball Short Stories," a collection of stories by various writers that all use baseball as their muse.
(2003-04-09)

X-files
Standing on a sealed bucket of caulk, peering over the heavily blocked and masked fences, the field can be seen as it displays its new look--desolate and quiet, the resting ground for sleeping yellow bulldozers.
(2003-04-02)

Tip of the Week
Seattle's Adam Voith, founder of TNI Books, delivers the letters of the eponymous dead guy from beyond the grave in "Stand Up, Ernie Baxter: You're Dead."
(2003-04-01)

Doing the deed
(2003-03-26)

Lights, Camera, Hurry
(2003-03-19)

Temporary rock stars
(2003-03-05)

Time is on his side
(2003-02-26)

Notes from the Madden Underground
(2003-01-29)

about Newcitychicago | about Newcity magazine | advertising | privacy policy | FAQ | employment