Wayne and Shuster - The Humour of Wayne and Shuster

The Humour of Wayne and Shuster

They performed "literate" comedy, combined with slapstick. They often used classical or Shakespearean settings and characters; on their first Ed Sullivan appearance, for example, they performed Rinse the Blood off My Toga, a sketch which retold Shakespeare's Julius Caesar in the style of a then-contemporary police procedural television series such as Dragnet. This sketch spawned the popular catchphrase, "Julie, don't go!"

After the opening of the Stratford Festival of Canada in 1958, they created a baseball-themed skit involving characters from Hamlet and Macbeth. The duo treated these sketches the way singers treat their most popular songs by performing new renditions many times over the years.

Some of Wayne's characters were scientific in nature, and used Professor Waynegartner, a derivation of his birth name, which he created while still in high school. The duo often based their sketches on contemporary events, trends and television programs.

They spoofed All in the Family as "All in the Royal Family", with the king calling Hamlet, "Meathead", and his queen "Dingbat". As Paramount was about to release Star Trek: The Motion Picture, the duo spoofed it with "Star Schtick". When The Equalizer went on the air, they responded with "The Tranquilizer", dealing with mysterious deaths on a game show that was a cross between The Price Is Right and The $64,000 Question. Similarly, The Six Million Dollar Man became "The Six Hundred Dollar Man", assembled with body parts such as "rump: $6 at Loblaws". When Dallas was popular, it was spoofed with a character determined to corner the fertilizer market, and featured a cameo by Barbara Frum. Fantasy Island was spoofed with "Fantasy Motel". Not even their home network CBC was safe. Around the same time that Anne of Green Gables aired, they spoofed it with "Sam of Green Gables," in which Green Gables farm is mistakenly sent a curmudgeonly old man from a retirement home.

The duo spoofed the commercials "we love to hate" with their own versions: "Crazar TVs" spoofed the "Quasar" TV brand with the high-pitched overture; "Oil of Oyvay" spoofed the de-aging Oil of Olay; "Macedonian Formula" spoofed Grecian Formula, and questioned why a man would say he used it and thus reveal he has grey hair; "Russian Express" spoofed American Express, with a muscular KGB agent saying "Don't leave home!"

Occasionally, the troupe also satirized Canadian politics. For example, when televising the proceedings of the Canadian House of Commons was first proposed in the 1970s, Wayne and Shuster responded with "Question Time", a sketch which depicted Question Period as a Las Vegas-style musical revue, with the Speaker of the House and members of parliament all performing a synchronized song-and-dance routine, slapping their desks in unison, and "debating" the issues by trading vaudeville-inspired quips and puns.

They spoofed accents and dialogue. After Wayne brought down an escaping felon with a gunshot (off screen), Shuster would say, "You got him in the rotunda/cloisters/etc.", with Wayne looking wryly at Shuster. "Srightry ahead of Panasonic!" "Srightry?" (Later...) "I go plug it in." "Don't you mean, 'prug it in'?" "No. One ethnic joke per sketch is plenty... or prenty if that's the way you like it." In another sketch, Shuster was calling on the phone for "Inspector Slattery." Wayne said, "Slattery will get you nowhere."