VERO BEACH — Launching into a no-holds-barred monologue at Riverside Theatre’s Comedy Zone, veteran comedian Al Romas could sense the gaze of a woman in her 80s.
“I felt a little weird,” said Romas, who has opened for the likes of Jerry Seinfeld and Dennis Miller. “So I asked her, ‘Do you mind any of this?’ She said, ‘Oh, no! It’s very funny.’”
That attitude – and audience – has prompted the theater to double its Comedy Zone weekends this summer, offering shows two weekends out of the month.
At the start of its fifth season, no one is laughing at what Comedy Zone has achieved for the theater’s bottom line.
Managing Director Jon Moses says the comedy weekends bring in $115,000 in ticket sales annually at a profit margin of around 70 percent.
Attendance has remained steady, averaging about 550 people per weekend over four shows, says Moses.
“That hasn’t really grown. What has grown is the popularity. We have numerous patrons that we see literally every time we have a Comedy Zone.”
At $15 a ticket, and with $2 beers along with wine, cocktails and snack food, the evenings tap into a different audience from those that attend the theater’s steady diet of big Broadway musicals, though management hopes the exposure will draw those comedy customers back for real theater in season.
“Saturdays sell out all the time,” says Moses.
The idea for staging comedy arose the year Riverside opened the Waxlax, a black box theater built in 2007 to house special events as well as the edgier, more contemporary plays of the Second Stage series.
The informal space has a flat floor without fixed seats, allowing for café tables and drink service.
Two years ago, the theater reduced Comedy Zone capacity from 215 to 180.
“We were selling it out, but it was crowded. It made it more difficult to provide service and it didn’t allow everyone to have a table,” Moses explains.
The reduction in size means that even a group of 10 or 20 can be seated near each other, Moses says.
Beginning this summer, bar food and sweets are being served by Hale Groves and Kilwin’s, both beforehand on the Riverside terrace and at table during the show.
Like all the Riverside comedians, Romas got the gig in Vero through the Heffron Talent International.
The Charlotte, N.C.-based company, owners of the Comedy Zone “product,” packaged the concept to draw in crowds to clubs and lounges on off nights.
Heffron matches comics to gigs in some 50 clubs, allowing them to also use the name “Comedy Zone” for their nights featuring comedy.
The agency claims to have access to some 3,000 comics, rotating the top 1,000 through venues throughout the U.S. and in the Bahamas.
It hasn’t been a problem getting comedians to Riverside, regardless of the area’s reputation as having an older and more conservative audience.
“They love that space,” says Pace, the booking agent, who is also in charge of Heffron’s “new venue development. We talk to the comics and the clubs every week after the shows to make sure we have the correct entertainers for their market. They all love it.”
Riverside, he says, is “more of a real show room,” as opposed to an intimate club or bar.
“In a club, they’re really pressed in,” says Romas. “The people are younger so you’re not thinking in the back of your mind, ‘Should I do this joke, or is it going to be too much for them?’”
On the other hand, he says playing a young college crowd has its own pitfalls.
“College kids are so politically correct that everybody’s offended,” he says. “They’ve ruined comedy. They don’t laugh.”
Vero apparently doesn’t have that problem.
When Romas’ warm-up act, Catherine Maloney, ventured into the realm of taboo with a bit on bad mothering, no one gasped, even when she joked about her stint as a preschool teacher wanting to dropkick a toddler across the room.
“I think the old people today aren’t the same as the old people when we were young,” Romas says. “When you think about it, the 70-year-old today was at Woodstock swinging with his wife and doing coke.”
After two decades of full-time work in comedy, at 50, Romas relates to the Vero audience in at least one way, whether he likes it or not.
“I still have my Nixon jokes,” he says.
And in Vero, even the hecklers are nice, he says.
When one patron kept calling out remarks during his Friday night set, management apologized to Romas afterward.
“I said, for what? He wasn’t heckling. He was talking.”
As for tailoring his material to Vero’s audience, “Funny is funny,” says Romas.
“If a joke is good, it should work as well in Atlantic City or Las Vegas as in Vero.”
On the other hand, every show is different, he says.
“Last night’s show went well, but that doesn’t mean anything tonight.”
Romas, who played “A” rooms in New York, including Caroline’s, the Comic Strip and Comedy Cellar, called Vero a “B-plus” room.
Riverside Theatre’s Comedy Zone has endured even as other comedy venues in Vero have opened and closed, including a recent effort at Costa d’Este Resort.
The latest effort is at Riverside Café, just across the park from Riverside Theatre. Offering comedy shows at 9 p.m. on the second and fourth Thursday of the month, the waterfront bar and café began hosting Groucho’s Comedy Club several months ago.
The laughs there are an even bigger bargain – the $10 cover charge includes a free drink.
As for Riverside Theatre’s Comedy Zone, the next comedy weekend is June 8 and 9.
Shows are Friday and Saturday night at 7:30 p.m. and 9:30 p.m.
Visit www.riversidetheatre.com, or call (772) 231-6990.
