Drew Dunn started his set in a British accent. Any newcomer to Dunn’s comedy just assumed he was British. He dropped the shtick 90 seconds in and riffed on how you can get away with more in a British accent. This start was the perfect setup for his style of comedy.

Dunn’s acts floats seamlessly between characters and standup and one cannot exist without the other. His character work is born from his standup and his standup leads into his excellent character work.

Characters Dunn did during this set included:

● Game of Thrones guy (born from Dunn taking about getting married at a young age, which has resulted in people asking him if it was an arranged marriage.)

●Smug German guy (born from Dunn’s take on people who compare vaccine mandates to Nazi Germany.)

●An 85 year old man hyperbolizing about COVID to his grandkids 50 years in the future (born from Dunn’s intent to milk living through COVID for all it is worth like his grandma did with respect to the great depression.)

●The piece de resistance for Drew Dunn’s act, his robot voice. You have to listen to it to believe it. He can make his voice sound indistinguishable from that robot voice you have heard a million times spamming your cell phone. He employs this voice gleefully in real life, using it on the phone when called about an extended vehicle warranty (they hang up on him now) and just talking loudly in the voice, pretending to have sex, of course, when he is by himself in his hotel room. I can’t imagine what it is like to wake up knowing you have this voice in your arsenal. I would employ it to such nefarious ends.

It’s easy for Dunn to do a wide variety of characters because he can do just about any accent. The aforementioned British and German, but also Scottish (an accent that “comes down from your nuts”), Game of Thrones (don’t pretend you don’t what I mean), Minnesota, Boston, and Australian. I doubt there is an accent he can’t do. His accents never come across as hacky or forced into the material. The always enhance his standup.

There is no substitute for seeing Dunn live because he luxuriates in engaging with his audience. If there’s a heckler, he’ll be ready to roll with them. He wants to riff on the job you hate, your large family, your inappropriate booing.

Crowd work and managing hecklers is a vital skill for any comic but Dunn’s has an extra layer to it because he frequently brings his character skills to the art of crowd work. He excels at making fun of drunk audience members (2:30 into that clip) by doing drunk characters, for instance.

Lucky for us, Dunn performs in the venues where comedy is at its best ⎯ small comedy clubs where you can wander over close to the start of the show after dinner across the street and get a great seat, even a front row seat.

Dunn will engage with you, he will make fun or your town (“This is the part of Illinois where every town has its own water tower with the name of the town on it”), and you will feel connected to the crowd and the comedy.

A night with Drew Dunn is a pleasant, fun night. He isn’t overtly political. He doesn’t wade into deeply controversial topics. And, as someone in a family of 7 kids needs to be able to do, he can diffuse a situation, make fun of something and move on very fast.

Drew Dunn is the fun, unpopular kid you knew in middle school who always had a good vibe, was really into band or dungeons and dragons, and always flew under the radar. You reconnect him with at a bar in your hometown one Thanksgiving and think “I really should have hung out with that guy more.”

Dunn is a New York-based comedian and it is no secret that many of the best comedians in the world live and work in New York. I am dying to make a trip to New York and just spend night after night going to The Stand, the Comedy Cellar, and the New York Comedy Club. I have two small kids and I am not in a position to just take off for New York so the chance to see one of these great New York comedians in my backyard was a wonderful treat. If you have the chance to see Drew Dunn, do it. When I finally do get to take the New York comedy trip of my dreams, I hope Drew Dunn is on the lineup.

As for more on Drew Dunn himself, I talked to him after the show and he told me he is headed to the Montreal Just for Laughs Festival next week to pitch a character-based show, based on his podcast Character Debates. This isn’t Dunn’s first trip to Montreal. He preformed at the New Faces Showcase in 2019, the biggest, most prestigious comedy showcase in the world. Hopefully this means we are going to see a lot more of Drew Dunn’s colorful characters and that robot voice in the future!

There is no comparison for live standup comedy and Dunn’s engagement with the crowd makes this especially true for him. So go see Drew live! You can see Drew Dunn’s upcoming shows and buy tickets here. You can see tons of clips of Drew Dunn’s excellent comedy and crowd work on his instagram.