Up in Your Grill, a four-person Seattle sketch comedy troupe, has attempted to solve this problem using a time-honored device: the bribe. Any critic who runs a review of Up in Your Grill's late-night run at Annex stands to receive $25, cash money. Doesn't matter if your review is positive, negative, or about what you had for breakfast. The Stranger has a long-standing policy of rewarding bribery, which brings us to this review.
Up in Your Grill, fortunately, is funny. All four members write and perform, and while their subject matter--office politics, relationships, and pop culture icons--is well-traveled territory, their approaches are fresh. More importantly, their sketches tend, as I mentioned, to be funny: a woman conducting a job interview with a prospective stalker; Kenny Loggins leading a tantric sex class; two drunk women at closing time one-upping each other for the attention of unseen men in the bar, from"I looove being single" and "I'm on the pill" to "I'm not wearing any underwear!" and "I put a roofie in my own drink!"
The performers are solid, all possessed of great straight faces and rarely stepping on each other's lines or laughs. The slightly drunken full house I saw it with laughed hard in places, and I couldn't find anyone who looked bored or annoyed. And given the risks of going to see live comedy, that's saying a lot.