Comedy shows are typically hit-or-miss; someone is either funny or they’re not. I’ve been lucky enough to have seen some pretty good comedians in the past, some of whom have even performed at Case Western Reserve University—and while not every joke Colin Jost or John Mulaney makes will elicit peals of laughter, I also don’t leave their shows with the sense that not everything in their set worked. Unfortunately, while “Gianmarco Soresi: The Leaning In” was pretty funny at times, not everything in his performance necessarily felt like it meshed well—he was the rare comedian who was, in fact, just okay.

Before Soresi himself went on, the show’s host did a set about his recent trip to Australia that couldn’t have been longer than five minutes, and was pretty good considering that his name wasn’t on the ticket. Then Soresi’s opener Liam Nelson came on, who—as he mentioned many times during his set—was a whopping seven feet tall. Nelson actually had my favorite performance of the night, describing a close encounter with a roller coaster he was too tall for as “riding a guillotine,” and how he challenged and publicly humiliated another seven-foot-tall Liam, who could have only been six-foot-seven “at best.” It’s not unusual that I tend to favor the openers over the main act at a comedy show—if you saw the University Program Board’s (UPB) 2023 Comedy Show, I think it’s safe to say that Marcello Hernandez outperformed Colin Jost—considering they have to work a little harder than the headliner does to win over the audience. With Nelson, I think this was once again the case.

With the crowd warmed up and ready, it was Soresi’s time to shine. I’ll start with what I liked: He had a lot of stage presence and excelled at physical comedy. The venue’s stage was only big enough to fit one person, and he still managed to use every inch of it. He wrapped himself up in the curtain and hid in the single rear corner. There was also a recurring gag where if Soresi wanted to swear, he would cover the microphone and shout whatever he wanted to say at the audience without the mic, giving the full effect of his anger without blowing out our eardrums. Also, despite whatever criticisms I give in the following paragraph, most of his individual jokes were funny, and the crowd laughed at pretty much everything he said even if I did not.

My main issue with Soresi was that I found some of his material a little odd. If you hadn’t guessed by his previously mentioned antics, Soresi was a theater kid—most of his material was about that—and his relationship with his girlfriend and being from New York City, and Jewish. Soresi also told a couple of off-color jokes about his suicidal friend and child pornography that just did not relate with his other material. I’m not necessarily against dark humor, but these jokes definitely toed the line in the sand of what is appropriate to say, and then kicked the metaphorical sand around a little. They just didn’t sound right coming after Soresi’s previous “I’m so dramatic! Ha ha!” shtick. Plus, he spent a couple of minutes talking about Dragon Ball Z and professional wrestling, which read a little too millennial to me. I also don’t care about either of those things, so it was a pretty boring stretch on my end.

I’d like to briefly touch on the venue as well, which was Hilarities 4th Street Theatre. It’s a nice place, located right across the street from House of Blues—with the little alley that they’re both situated in filled with restaurants and bars, which gives the area a lively energy. However, Hilarities is a dinner theater, which I think is kind of an odd choice for a comedy venue. The tables you sit at are spaced pretty far apart, isolating the crowd. There was also a two-item minimum per person at the show I attended, which just felt like a cash grab to me. I wanted to spend my night and money on the comedians’ performance rather than buying okay food and drinks.

All in all, Soresi’s “The Leaning In Tour” was an alright show. The individual comedians were funny, but it was the details that ultimately kept the night at good rather than great. If a representative from UPB is reading this, I’d prefer it if you all picked someone else to perform this spring, thank you very much.