Phamaly Theatre sketch show has plenty of laughs as well as some important lessons

It can be a bit disconcerting at first to watch a show where you’re expected to laugh at people with disabilities. But in Funny as a Crutch, produced by Denver’s disability-affirmative Phamaly Theatre Company, the humor is an effective messaging tool to illustrate their lives.

The set of 10 sketches by Rich Orloff gives the Phamaly company plenty of opportunity to show their comedic chops in a variety of situations. The bits contain lots of silly and crude humor just like any sketch show would, and they run the gamut from a man coming out to his brother to a set of parents horrified that their daughter wants to marry a man with only nine toes. But the points being made are never far from the surface, and they mostly circle around the same theme: I’m a regular person just like you who happens to have a disability.

One of the most impactful sketches involved a man named Sam on a job interview (Andrew Small) accompanied by his “thing” (Casey B. Johnston). It’s not long before Sam’s Thing is jumping about, saying weird shit and even coming on to the interviewer (Melissa Ottke). Sam just wants to focus on his wealth of experience and suitability for the job while all she can see is the thing (i.e., his disability) that’s become the sole focus.

Keenan Gluck, who was a standout in Phamaly’s 2023 production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, is featured in several sketches. My favorite was one called “Nellie,” where he plays a sarcastic puppet surrounded by other puppets who all share a disability of some kind. Think Quasimodo, Captain Hook, Tiny Tim and Oedipus.

Romance gets its due, with Small appearing as a French Lothario in “Dutch Treat” with Candy Dungan and Madison Stout playing two Americans on vacation in Europe. Beth Marshall is very funny as the waiter. In “Totally Accessible,” Gluck and Dungan play a dual-wheelchair couple who face a reckoning when she brings up having a baby. The tension mounts as she confesses the fact that marrying someone else in a chair was a tough decision for her.

A story about a man put in a wheelchair by an accident (Gluck) trying to come out as gay to his older brother was quite moving. Having his younger brother disabled is one thing for Mark (Joshua Jackson), but gay on top of it? The bit highlights the absurdity of thinking a disabled person is only allowed one “thing” while abled people are for the most part accepted with many different traits.

The company of ‘Funny as a Crutch’ | Photo: RDGPhotography

The material in Crutch is a mix of poignant and silly, with some sketches hitting better than others. Indeed, some of it is downright corny and dated, but overall the cast does a nice job diving into all of it with gusto. If you’re asking whether this show is more for the disabled community than the general public, I’d say both. While a wheelchair joke might hit home more precisely for someone in a chair, an abled person may well get a laugh and a lesson out of such a sketch.

If Phamaly’s goal with Funny as a Crutch was to have a bit of fun with disabilities while also driving home the message that those issues should never obscure the whole person, then it was an unqualified success. I can say that as the show went on, I found myself focusing simply on the stories and the humor as well as the performances themselves.