TOMB RADIERS The Kids still mine dark impulses in their new show.

It’s been six years since the Kids in the Hall toured and a dozen since they last wrote together, for the underappreciated film Brain Candy. Thanks to open schedules and a nostalgia for live sketch, the five Canadian firebrands will be at the Nokia Theatre Friday 18–Sunday 20—with almost all-new material. We know what you’re thinking, but don’t: We saw the show last summer in Montreal at the Just for Laughs festival, and it’s fantastic. These kids have aged well.

What’s it like to tour again?
Kevin McDonald: I’m at the age where sketch is the thing I enjoy the most. I just don’t want it to become the new mime and people start hating it.
Bruce McCulloch: It’s like going back to your family for Christmas: You’ve changed but you haven’t.
Scott Thompson: After Brain Candy, we couldn’t look at each other for five years. Now, we’ve worked through our issues, and it’s just a lot of fun.

Why is there less fighting?
Dave Foley: We’re old. When we were young, everything was a life-and-death situation.
Thompson: I look back at some of the things I fought for and go, What was I thinking? They were right: I should have cut that part.

Has the group dynamic changed?
Foley: We’re still the same: We bond over making fun of Scott. The four Kids make me laugh harder than anyone else in the world. It’s fun to find out that we still had sketches we hadn’t written yet. When we left the TV show, we wanted to quit before we started doing Kids in the Hall–style sketches.

Such as…?
Foley: Uh…a baby…who’s the head of a company…and a heroin addict.
McCulloch: We do have our own language. I know what everyone will think of each joke pitch.

Where do they fall?
McCulloch: Mark has a wild point of view. Scott wants to know what his performance part could be to make it longer. Dave is skeptical until it really works. Kevin…he just laughs.
Mark McKinney: A couple function as comedy consciences—Kevin is one of those, so is Scott—who get lit up if there’s an internal truism to a sketch that needs to be respected. Dave is sharp with lines, jokes, dialogue. Bruce is good at almost everything, and he’s a work pig. I can be loopy, which is surprising because I come across as straight.… That sounded horrible. “McKinney describes himself as ‘loopy.’ ‘Boyish’ was also included in his rambling positive assessment of himself.”
McDonald: Individual talents get things started, but it’s the one big brain from Kids in the Hall that improves things.

Define that sixth element.
McKinney: Hmm. [Pause] Synerjule.
Thompson: It’s a dry orgasm—you can look each other in the face after.
McCulloch: We have a saying in the group: We’re all really smart guys but the troupe is one dumb guy.

How’s the material different now?
Thompson: The show is quite filthy. We’ve always been pretty raunchy, but I was amazed by how sexually obsessed we still are.
Foley: The change is we used to look too young to play businessmen, and now we’re quite believable in those characters.

But it’s hard to play teenagers.
Foley: It’s impossible. I don’t want to put on the Hecubus tights ever again.

How does this all end?
Thompson: I think we’d like to leave the same kind of legacy that Monty Python did. Who knows if it will happen? The truth is, with this tour, I just want to have fun. I’m proud of the material. Chemistry is something that comes along so rarely. We’ve all worked with many other people and done lots of other things, but the five of us together is really…very strange.

The Kids in the Hall perform at the Nokia Theatre Apr 18–20, 2008.