Second City Tidbits

I found several articles mentioning Paul during his Second City days. They were mostly snippits so I have collected them all here with the month and year. It seems Paul was up for an award for his performance!

  • January 1992: “The theme of an ungrounded society is expanded in a couple outstanding scenes. In one, Stephen Colbert plays a lonely mailroom clerk who keeps interrupting co-worker Paul Dinello's attempt to crack a stupid joke. Colbert hallucinates that Dinello is Jesus Christ. Between Colbert's zealotry and Dinello's embarassment, the pair form a wonderful team.” Ku Klux Klambake review


  • April 1992: Did performances in Vienna, Austria of Ku Klux Klambake


  • June 1992: “The most hilarious moment comes early in the 90-minute show when a woman (Nia Vardalos), waiting for emergency hospital care from a callous doctor (Paul Dinello), is stunned by the arrival of her family. These folks are some of the best wackos this side of Twin Peaks: a squinting, swearing, unzippered father-knows-worst (played by Blue Velveeta founder and first-time Second City member Mitch Rouse), a momma who looks like the Beverly Hillbillies' Granny on speed (Amy Sedaris) and Pop's kid brother (Stephen Colbert), dressed in a gym outfit and obsessed with groin pulls. A phlegmy grandad (Ian Gomez) is a fine touch.”

    “As part of his impressive debut, Rouse also scores as a punch-drunk victim who is forced by a chirpy psychologist to reenact - again and again - the beating he received from a street punk, all in the name of rehabbing the thug. His twitching and bobbing is hysterical. And Rouse and Dinello perform a zany - and difficult - skit as two dropouts who climb the K2 peak to escape from the urban fishbowl.”



  • Dec 1992: The feat: Dressed as camouflaged, rifle-toting grunts intent on rescuing still-captured POWs in present-day Vietnam, the four male actors climb into the auditorium from a hatch door built into the room some 12 feet above the ground especially for the stunt.

    Swinging from well-placed vines, they precariously climb onto the long bar railing that runs across the Second City house. (Startled audience members hurriedly sweep it clean of glasses and programs.) Sidewinding across until they encounter another convenient vine, the "soldiers" finally make a 10-foot swing onto the stage, never having touched the floor.There, after a journey risky enough to be an actuarian's nightmare, they discover that H. Ross Perot (played by a self-righteously dithering Amy Sedaris) is already there, busily turning the MIAs into a concession racket.After watching this daunting struggle across a perilous audience, we fully share the rescuers' feelings of utter waste.According to director Tom Gianas, the harrowing scene not only opens up the theater as never before and provides some in-your-face intimacy, it has a serious side. "Paul Dinello and I were inspired by Bruce Franklin's 1991 article in the Atlantic (magazine) about the cruel hoax perpetrated on the families of MIAs, a mythology that's been exploited by Hollywood and by politicians.



  • January 1993: “Truth, Justice or the American Way''. What really makes this outlandish and seemingly distasteful material all work is the performance of an incredibly talented and funny cast. Directed by Tom Gianas with musical direction by Ruby Streak, seasoned veteran Michael McCarthy is joined by Fran Adams, Steven Carrell, John Rubano, Ruth Rudnick and newcomers Amy Sedaris and Paul Dinello.Sedaris is an absolute sensation in a variety of challenging and diverse roles; and Dinello demonstrates the timing and facial reactions that make him a valuable addition to Joyce Sloane's famous comedy group.



  • June 1993: “Under the direction of Ron West, the cast - Fran Adams, Steven Carell, Stephen Colbert, Paul Dinello, David Razowsky, Ruth Rudnick and Amy Sedaris - persents a well-balanced and confident crew. Part of the fun is watching the women, typically outnumbered at Second City, hold their own with the men.

    In one keeper, three machine-gun-toting female GIs debate the role of men in the military. Sedaris, a trigger-happy Rambette, bemoans all those "big hairy targets." The first act ends with male-female showdown over the game "Win, Lose or Draw," in which the women (Adams and Rudnick) guess complex words with ease - a dot on paper kets the image of Bart Starr - while their husbands (Carell and Dinello) struggle with conveying the image of items such as toilet plungers. Only some boy bonding trickery saves the game for the bruised male egos.Politics float in and out, but without any heavy-handed presence. Razowsky and Colbert execute a verbal high-wire act as two sepies confronting one another in a small banana republic. They trace each other's involvement with famous cases - the Hoffa disappearance, JFK's assassination - by linking words based on their meals. "Eggs Benedict" leads to Benedict Arnold, and on to some wild, and eventually improvised, conclusion.



  • June 1993: One skit, "Peak Earning Potential," could serve as one of those mini-masterpieces the troupe trots out at anniversaries. Two Oak Park brothers shoot basketballs and pretend that they're the Bulls, in a hilarious slow-motion, docudrama mirage. But that funny bit disguises an underlying valentine about a couple of 30ish brothers, with violently opposing values and a deep, unbreakable bond. As in much of the show, the players make the bit: two gifted chameleons, Stephen Colbert and Paul Dinello, joined by pinch-mouthed Amy Sedaris, this show's lead caricaturist, here in a cameo as the boys' Bette Davis crone of a mother. one elongated spy-movie word-association puzzle box (from Colbert and David Razowsky);



  • July 1993: Several performers such as Steven Carell, Paul Dinello and Amy Sedaris continue to shine with their zany physical antics; but, unfortunately, the balance of the cast and the material never quite measure up to their energy and inventiveness and Second City's tradition.



  • September 1993: 25th Joseph Jefferson Awards bestowed annually on Chicago theaters: Steven Carell and Paul Dinello, both in "Truth, Justice or the American Way" nominated