Bruce McCulloch, best known by comedy fans as one of the legendary cast members of the Canadian super sketch troupe Kids in the Hall (KITH), has returned to his hometown of Calgary with something to say.

Dark Purple Slice is his newest one-man show, eponymously named after a bad review that called him the dark purple slice of the Kids in the Hall, leans into that pitch-black humour about owning the foibles of life.

Juno-nominated Canadian rock band Odds and veteran television composer Craig Northey will also be on stage providing the live music for Dark Purple Slice, in what McCulloch promises to be a show that is part standup comedy, part audience participation, and with a bit of mock self-deprecation, part musical.

“I expanded that concept that dark humor gets us through the very tough times that we have in life. So there’s some conversation about a couple things that happened to me and my family during Covid, and it’s just how we all get through all the kinds of crappy things in life using our gallows humour,” said McCulloch.

“But it’s really about my worldview, and kind of we’re all in this together.”

Some of that darkly funny humour comes from the intentional absurdities of life, or at least the contradictions that can come from everyday situations.

“Never trust a man who says trust me. Never paint your face with the name of your local sports team—unless they’re playing. Never recycle. Your neighbours will see what a boozer you are,” he said.

“Never go up to a blind man with some ripple chips and say ‘here, read these.'”

Not just standup

Something McCulloch said that was at the heart of the show, was not wanting to just do a standup set in front of an audience.

“I started here at Loose Moose almost 40 years ago, and there I learned the most fun you can ever have is just lay out something for an audience. So, some of these monologues I’ve tried a the Rivoli [in Toronto] or places like that which are little clubs. But I think you just do it instinctively, and you add music and you go ‘oh, no too much music; too little; does this monologue fit?’ So it’s really an exploratory thing to finally come up with a show,” he said.

“Of course I change it. We’re opening tonight, but I’ll change it tomorrow. I’ll change it Saturday, because I’m obsessive.”

That’s a side of McCulloch that audiences, especially those who know him primarily just from the most recent Amazon Prime Video iteration of Kids in the Hall, might not expect.

“I did a predecessor to the show called Tales of Bravery and Stupidity, that I did off-Broadway a couple of times… and it’s very similar in its themes and its intent. I think they were surprised that there’s really an emotional quality to it,” he said.

“I love stand up, but I don’t want to come out and just do stand up for 65 minutes and say goodnight. I want to take people on a journey if they’re going to spend 70 minutes with me. I think they want something more than just laughs, and I think that sometimes surprises them.”

On the other hand, said Dark Purple Slice director Blake Brooker, people might just get what McCulloch is going for just because what he’s going for is the zeitgeist of the day.

“If people don’t know Bruce, then you’ll be put in it. But I mean, dark humour is the currency of the day in a way. It’s almost grim humour if sometimes dark humor—you might want to say it or it’s satire, possibly—but it is there is a heart to it and a sense of being human together,” Brooker said.

Not the only kid to make an appearance in the halls of ArtsCommons

While McCulloch’s appearance at the 2024 High Performance Rodeo is closing out the final week of the festival, he wasn’t the only alumni from Kids in the Hall to make an appearance at this year’s rodeo.

Scott Thompson, performing as Buddle Cole, put on his show King earlier in January.

Brooker said it felt good to have almost all of the KITH performers take part in one rodeo or another.

“We’ve had a number of shows with Scott Thompson, and we’ve had Kevin McDonald before. We’ve had everybody but Dave Foley, in terms of those guys, but there’s all kinds of people. Our company is 43 years old, the Rodeo itself is 38. So we’re no spring chickens, and we’ve run to all kinds of people over the days and years,” Brooker said.

“Like the line ‘see something, say something,’ when we see something, we show something. We like to share these things with Calgary.”

He said that bringing McCulloch back to Calgary though was a real pleasure both as a friend of One Yellow Rabbit, but also as a great performer.

“It’s a true pleasure and privilege to be with a colleague who we’ve known for a long time, and then just see how things evolve and how things change. But of course, at the center of it all is humour, and that’s how we bond, and that’s our way of looking at the world,” Brooker said.

“Sometimes you gotta laugh.”

Dark Purple Slice plays the Martha Cohen Theatre from Feb. 1 through 3. Tickets are available at www.oyr.org/productions/dark-purple-slice.