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[title]Anjelah Johnson quickly won over her audience at the Vic during her Just for Laughs show Wednesday night when she stepped on stage to a crowd poised with their smartphones. She strutted across the stage striking several impromptu poses for the audience. "Tag me," she said before moving on to what would become a show filled with almost non-stop laughter.
Johnson set the record straight (quite literally) early on, by clarifying that she wears "ponytails 'cause I'm lazy, not a lesbian" and transitioned to a series of jokes about her Puerto Rican husband and his family, "You don't realize how different Mexicans are from Puerto Ricans until you sign up to marry one."
The show progressed without force as Johnson set up jokes that would be referenced again later in her set and didn't miss a beat when loud rolls of thunder shook the venue. "I'm not ready, Lord. I'm not ready," she stopped and shouted to the ceiling.
Then, when it felt like the show could end at any minute, Johnson handed the audience the gift-wrapped present they'd waited so patiently for all night when she finally name-dropped her famous MADtv character, the disgruntled King Burger employee Bon Qui Qui. Everyone seemed to explode with a joy they'd been repressing for far too long as soon as she uttered her first "Ruu." As if this wasn't enough, she dragged out one of her other beloved characters, the judgmental Vietnamese manicurist, Tammy.
The only slow moment of the night was an overdrawn, shameless plug for merch (though I'll be the first to admit, I thought long and hard about buying that SACURRITY T-shirt), which was completely forgiven when Johnson treated the audience to a rap number from Bon Qui Qui's EP, which was, of course, for sale.