There are few things that will compel me to travel above 14th street, but when I heard that Ricky Gervais, creator of The Office and the star of the UK version, was performing uptown, I quickly realized that I had no choice.

The show started with opening act Todd Barry, perhaps most well known (at least by me) as guest starring in Flight of the Conchords as Todd, the bongo playing “third Conchord”. I thought he was terribly annoying in the show, so I wasn’t expecting much. However, his set was excellent and covered a spectrum of mundane yet hilarious topics including Tom’s of Maine deodorant, Californian’s Mexican food snobbery, and Spanish prostitutes in Barcelona.

After being thoroughly warmed up by Todd, the big man himself came out. He actually isn’t as big as I’d imagined, though. The show he performed was brand new and much of the material had not been audience tested. This didn’t affect the quality of the show at all. No target groups were left alone: Fat people, gays, Creationists, Middle Eastern travelers, homosexual animals– everyone got made fun of equally. Gervais used the illustrations in two books in his set, which at first I thought to be a bit of a cop-out, but I soon forgot about that sentiment after I couldn’t breathe from laughing so hard. Who knew the story of Noah and the Ark was rife with homosexual innuendo and scientific inconsistencies? I thought his delivery would be awkward like his David Brent character on The Office, but his style was actually quite smooth and natural sounding. Overall, definitely worth the $25 ticket price. Especially since he’s playing Carnegie Hall tonight and ticket prices for that show range from $40-90. Yikes.