Kevin McDonald, Superstar! | The New Yorker

The other day, Kevin McDonald, the curly-haired actor-comedian best known as one of the Kids in the Hall, the beloved Canadian comedy troupe, invited a few people to a rehearsal in a tiny hotel room in lower Manhattan. One guest’s knock had a rhythm similar to “shave and a haircut.” McDonald knocked back “two bits,” then opened the door. “I had to do the callback,” he said, looking pleased. “And I did shave today.” McDonald, who lives in Winnipeg, was in town to perform his rock opera in progress, “Kevin McDonald Superstar,” at the SoHo Playhouse, with friends like his fellow-comedians Dave Hill and Janeane Garofalo. McDonald’s curls are now gray, and he was wiry and energetic in an oversized hoodie. The hotel room was angular and spare—one bed, one chair, two bananas—and it overlooked an H.V.A.C. system. “I opened the curtains so we could see the view,” McDonald said. “I’ll close them when I’m alone later, crying.” Two young collaborators, John Wlaysewski and Aaron Tarnow, sat on the bed, with librettos. Wlaysewski, the show’s music director, held an acoustic guitar. “I’ll be Joan Rivers,” he said.

“Kevin McDonald Superstar,” with music and lyrics by McDonald, centers on a few days of youthful idiocy in 1991—when the “Kids in the Hall” series was on HBO—during which he and his fellow-Kid Dave Foley travelled from Toronto to New York to appear on Joan Rivers’s talk show. The night before the taping, in an effort to whoop it up in New York, the pair attended a gala charity event—an AIDS benefit, featuring the band Deee-Lite. Drunken mayhem and bad decisions, some atop a buffet table, ensued. “Kevin McDonald Superstar,” like one of its inspirations, “Jesus Christ Superstar,” has themes of fame, doubt, betrayal, and alcohol. Wlaysewski began strumming a plaintive ballad with an air of foreboding. “Kevin, do you want to start out being Lorne Michaels?” Tarnow asked. (Michaels produced “The Kids in the Hall.”)

“You know, the thing about this is, I’ll kill them,” McDonald said, in a Lorne voice. As himself, he sang, “Joan Rivers says . . .”

“Can we talk? Can we talk?” Wlaysewski said.

“Dave and Kevin say,” McDonald sang.

“No—’cuz we’re drunk,” McDonald and Tarnow sang. They sang of on-camera mumbling, dehydration, and wooziness; the last line was “Get them off my set!” Other numbers were more rollicking; McDonald danced in a style that suggested a frenetic hybrid of the frug and the mashed potato. “I cheated on you / with a Howard Stern fan / at an AIDS benefit,” he sang. On “I will never cheat, never cheat again / Except on taxes / But only if it’s done quasi-legally,” he hit an operatic series of notes, almost like yodelling. Tarnow looked up, wide-eyed. “Wow,” he said.

“I’m trying to make it like Frank Sinatra, phrasing when I want,” McDonald said.

“That’s the first thing I thought of—Ol’ Blue Eyes,” Wlaysewski said. Then another knock at the door: the comedian Frank Conniff, who’d be playing Dave Foley. “I can’t sing, but I sang a lot on ‘Mystery Science Theater,’ ” he said. Wlaysewski reassured him: “I play defensive guitar.” They began. “Why are those silly heteros / Fucking up this AIDS benefit?” everyone sang.

After rehearsal, the gang went to Harney & Sons for a vocals-friendly round of tea. McDonald jostled, and apologized to, a “HAVE A TEA-RRIFFIC DAY!” sign, then sat at a table and recalled his musical journey. “I’ve always had a knack for melody,” he said. As a kid, in Toronto, “I’d hum songs and write lyrics I thought were witty. I’d sing them to my mother as she was washing the dishes.” Artistic revelations came early. First, the Beatles; second, “King Kong” (“I thought, Wow! Movies could be that good?”); and third, in Catholic school, “Jesus Christ Superstar,” which blew his mind. “The relationship between Jesus and Judas—ambiguous!” he recalled. “That was the key thing in the seventies. I went to Sam the Record Man and bought the movie soundtrack. I tried to write it all down, like I’d done with ‘Young Frankenstein.’ It made me love rock opera.” Kids in the Hall, which he formed with Foley, Bruce McCulloch, Scott Thompson, and Mark McKinney, in 1984, had a punk comedy sensibility—and punk is part of what later bonded him with Dave Hill, who would open that week’s shows and play multiple roles. They met at Sketchfest in San Francisco, in 2023, duetting on “Institutionalized,” the Suicidal Tendencies song from “Repo Man.” “I had a comedy crush on him,” McDonald said. It intensified a year later, when Hill caused a punkish ruckus at a hockey game in Anaheim. “I was watching, because the Leafs were playing,” McDonald said. In an electric-guitar performance that circulated online, Hill played both the U.S. and Canadian national anthems Hendrix style, with shredding. McDonald laughed. “You see the players on the ice—they’re like this.” He made an “agog” face. “They were like the guys at the AIDS benefit.” ♦