Laughing Gas Comedy gets back to funny business

There wasn't much to laugh about when the COVID-19 pandemic closed Cape Girardeau's comedy club a year and a half ago.

"March 21 of 2020 was our last show," remembers Jeff Johnson, owner of Laughing Gas Comedy in the Town Plaza Shopping Center. The club closed the following day, along with thousands of other "nonessential" businesses, to help slow the spread of coronavirus.

And while most of those businesses have since reopened, Johnson's comedy club remained shuttered out of concern for public health and limitations on indoor crowd sizes.

But that's about to change as preparations are underway to reopen Laughing Gas next month with shows every Thursday, Friday and Saturday starting Sept. 9.

"If I'm not wrong, that will make it about 18 months between shows," Johnson said last week as he and a few staff members started preparations for next month's reopening.

Laughter is contagious

Laughing Gas could have opened sooner, as some comedy clubs across the nation did, but Johnson said laughter is contagious and a big audience usually makes a performance seem funnier than when a comic delivers his or her jokes to an audience that's only a third full.

"Some clubs tried to reopen when capacity limits were under 50% and they were only seating every other table, and they were only getting 25 or 30 people to show up," Johnson said. "But they were happy just to have some business and the comics who performed at those shows just wanted to be on stage because a lot of them were locked down with no income. Performing is like therapy for a lot of these people. Some tried doing social media, podcasts or live video, but they weren't able to interact with an audience."

A good audience, Johnson said, can boost the energy of a comedian's performance by around 25%.

"But when you're sitting in a spread-out environment, 10 or 20 feet from the next person, you don't feel that," he observed. "Comics feed off the audience and that makes them funnier when everybody is laughing."

Thanks to government stimulus packages and financial assistance from the Small Business Administration — as well as an understanding and cooperative landlord — Johnson was able to keep Laughing Gas closed throughout most of the pandemic.

"It didn't make sense to reopen until I knew I could have 100% occupancy," he said. "Even though I know I won't have 100% at every show, I still wanted to have that option."

Full capacity at the Laughing Gas Comedy Club is around 225, and Johnson expects to see that based on advance ticket sales for shows later this year.

Opening acts

Buzz Sutherland, who was the club's inaugural comic when it opened in 2019, will take the stage when it reopens for shows Sept. 9, 10 and 11.

"He's a pretty good personal friend and I couldn't think of anybody better to reopen us," Johnson said. "He's from Alabama, but spent most of his adult life in St. Louis, went to Mizzou and worked at KSHE-95."

Over the course of his comedic career, Sutherland has performed on HBO's "Comic Relief," MTV's "Half Hour Comedy Hour," Country Music Television, Disney and numerous other platforms with humor described as 100% clean and 200% funny.

The club has booked about a half-dozen other performers in September and October, including Ginger Billy on Oct. 1 and 2.

"The minute I put the word out he was coming, tickets started selling like crazy," Johnson said. By late last week, he said there were only about 20 tickets left for Billy's first show Oct. 1. "His first show on Saturday (Oct. 2) is sold out and only about half the tickets are left for his second show that night."

An updated list of comics and their performance dates may be found on the club's Facebook page and website, www.n2ocomedy.com. The "n2o" is the chemical formula for nitrous oxide, commonly known as "laughing gas."

In addition to the comics already on the Laughing Gas schedule, other notable performers Johnson says will likely appear on the Laughing Gas stage in the coming months include John Caparulo, Donnie Baker and Lavell Crawford, an actor and comedian from the St. Louis area who became well known in the role of Saul Goodman's body guard on AMC's "Breaking Bad" and "Better Call Saul."

"I've known him for 25 years and think he's going to come down in December," Johnson said.

Crawford is one of many performers Johnson has gotten to know over the years.

"I've been in the industry since the mid-'90s, working out of St. Louis with Funny Bone for a long time, so I knew what it would take to have a comedy venue and I didn't want to do a half-job of it," he said. "I wanted Laughing Gas to be a legitimate, professional comedy club. I didn't want to have a bar with comedy; I wanted to have a comedy club with a bar."

Safety precautions

When patrons return to Laughing Gas, they'll notice a few changes because of COVID-19.

"We'll be following the guidelines out there as far as safety goes," Johnson said. "We're not going to require masks, but we want people to feel comfortable, so if they would like to wear a mask because they're not vaccinated or because they'd feel more comfortable since it's a theater atmosphere, they're more than welcome to."

Hand sanitizing stations are being added to the club and air dryers have been installed in the restrooms.

"We weren't a 'dirty' place before, but we'll be kicking things up a notch," he said.

More than anything, Johnson said he wants people to feel safe and enjoy themselves at Laughing Gas.

"The goal is just to get back to laughing again and to bring back some normalcy," he said.

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