The tortured path to reopening The Comedy Studio in Harvard Square ends Thursday in laughter – presumably – but more accurately with a certificate of occupancy from the City of Cambridge, clearing the way for its first show in more than two and a half years.
“We just got our final approval, we pick up the certificates on Thursday morning, so beginning Thursday night, The Comedy Studio is once again open to the public in the heart of Harvard Square,” the comedy club said in a Wednesday email. “After an agonizing amount of sweat, tears, fund-raising, cost-overruns, meetings, and delays, The Comedy Studio will open.”
Even that didn’t go as planned: The city deferred the morning pickup of certification to 3:30 p.m., the club’s John Bonham-Carter said. The first show will go on; there’s a chance there might not be alcohol served.
A “relaxed opening show” with Brianna Woodward, Mo Mussa, Jack Hall and Al Christakis is set for 7 p.m. at the new, $2 million club in a 5 John F. Kennedy St. basement space.
A few hour’s delay is an improvement over a false start in mid-August, when an electrical inspection scheduled with the city was canceled at the last minute because of an inspector illness – forcing another month of delay in Comedy Studio shows because the city’s Inspectional Services Department had no one to fill in. A soft-opening party went forward, but not the schedule of shows that was to follow.
It’s “not necessarily” the case that ISD doesn’t have staff to substitute in case of an illness, “but this was a more niche inspection,” city spokesperson Jeremy Warnick said in August.
Three decades of history
The club began April 14, 1996, when The Comedy Studio name was attached to events that began in March 1995. In its more than 20 years, The Comedy Studio has launched the careers of stars such as Gary Gulman, Sam Jay, Jen Kirkman, Eugene Mirman, Baratunde Thurston and Emma Willmann and been visited by everyone from Ali Wong and Mike Birbiglia to Anthony Jeselnik and Sarah Silverman.
Rent hikes in 2017 forced founder Rick Jenkins to relocate from the restaurant. Bow Market managers Zachary Baum and Matthew Boyes-Watson stepped in and Jenkins, with some friendly investors, built a new Studio fronted by a Variety cocktail bar in Union Square, Somerville, opening on Sept. 20, 2018.
Jenkins hoped the Bow Market retail complex of small shops and eateries around a courtyard would become a permanent home; his team never imagined that they would have less than a year and a half of operations before a pandemic arrived. Bow Market and Jenkins also had different ideas about how to emerge from the pandemic, leading to Jenkins and Farris establishing a residency at Vera’s restaurant and bar, also within Somerville’s Union Square. They expected to be there until the Abbot space is built out, but instead shows ended years ago.
A long series of estimated openings were missed as the complications and expenses of construction piled up. Jenkins brought on investors, then stepped back and that group, led by Somerville’s Bonham-Carter, led starting in May.
“In this process we’ve learned a lot about putting a room together, booking shows, picking tiles, building a website, hiring great people,” the new group said in an email. “In the coming weeks we’ll be announcing a ton of new shows, events, headliners, open mic opportunities, classes and more.”
The entrance on JFK Street will be roughly where the Catch a Rising Star comedy club was in the late 1980s, Jenkins said. The club at 30B JFK St., in what’s known as The Waugh Building, was a famed spot for comics such as Steven Wright, Jerry Seinfeld and Joy Behar – though not as long-lived as The Comedy Studio itself a few blocks away, on the third floor of the Hong Kong restaurant at 1238 Massachusetts Ave.
The Comedy Studio, 5 John F. Kennedy St., Harvard Square, Cambridge
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Without Rick Jenkins, a better name for this club would be A Comedy Studio.