AOL Loves Comedy Castle--
Voted #2 in U.S. in Laffs poll - AND ONE OF THE "TOP ELEVEN" comedy clubs in the U.S. (click here)
Five nights a week, healthy doses of belly laughs and guffaws rock the corner of Fourth and Troy. In the aircraft hangar of a performance room, Ridley's Open Mike Night has long provided practice for Michigan's comedic heroes like Tim Allen and Dave Coulier. Each Wednesday, the club still gives up the stage to brave souls with a penchant for poking fun. A full-service bar and attentive waitstaff, as well as an entertaining photo wall of past acts, are pre-show diversions that are not to be missed. And you just might meet the man of the house himself, or better yet, the headliners who sometimes chill at the bar. Undoubtedly a premiere spot for great laughs, the Comedy Castle's brand of medicine is sure to leave you feeling completely cured of all that ails you. -- Jessica J. Shaw
laini619's Review 11/10/2003
 
A lot of fun. Good comics, good service.
Kirknriv's Review 08/21/2003
Talent Scout coming. Write to Pryscilla74@yahoo.com for details. codeALL4241
Deb26823's Review 11/05/2002
a great place!!!!
Redwingheather14's Review 01/27/2002
We had a great time, at the Comedy Castle. Cannot wait to go back. Would tell everyone to go!!!!
ENTROCK's Review 02/20/2001
HAD A GREAT TIME
Garbage truck 46's Review 12/16/2000
great comedy,friendly,and good service.
Caddy4767's Review 08/18/2000
Outstanding!!! This is a First Rate Comedy Club with Top Notch Talent!
rick's Review 06/08/2000
best in the city
--A quarter century of comedy
Carol Hopkins
Daily Oakland Press February 7, 2004
ROYAL OAK - Autographed black-and-white publicity shots of Jerry Seinfeld, Jay Leno, Drew Carey, Ellen DeGeneres, Jim Carrey, Tim Allen and a goofy gaggle of other comics crowd the lobby wall at Mark Ridley's Comedy Castle in Royal Oak. Inside the comedy club off to the side, the room is as black as the inside of a coffin. Funny place, you think, for so much laughing.
It's been 25 years since Ridley became a club owner and through boom and bust, he's managed to keep the klieg lights on.
Comedian Dave Coulier, who was a regular when Ridley first opened in 1979, calls him one of the best club owners in the nation.
"He has comedy in his blood," Coulier says. "To a lot of club owners, it's a business. For Mark, it's his passion."
Ridley, 52, grew up in Walled Lake, surrounded by comedy of the day. Jerry Stiller and Anne Meara made him laugh on the Ed Sullivan show. When he was a teen, his parents bought him comedy albums by the young Bill Cosby and Bob Newhart.
He wound up attending Wayne State University with the idea of becoming a filmmaker. In 1979, Ridley went to Los Angeles to take a test for filmmaking and spent his evenings at the famous Comedy Store.
"I went every night I was there. I saw David Letterman, Richard Pryor, JJ Walker, Robin Williams. I thought it was the coolest thing in the world," he remembers.
The 28-year-old came back and, while working as stagehand and waiter, came up with the idea of starting his own club.
The late restaurateur Bruce Cameron encouraged him, suggesting he open a club downstairs in his restaurant, The Meeting Place, at Orchard Lake and Pontiac Trail.
"I didn't know what I was doing," he says, laughing. He recalls one night when hundreds of people were waiting to get into the 90-seat room. "I was young and dumb."
But Ridley knew talent. The then-unknown Tim Allen took the stage in mid-February 1979. Dave Coulier, so young, he was still wearing braces, also started performing. "These were diamonds in the rough," Ridley says now.
After eight months performing at Ridley's, Coulier remembers the club owner approached him and said, 'You're ready to leave.' "
Coulier continues, "I thought, what's he mean, move to Roseville? But he was saying you're ready to go to LA. I got chills. It's what every comedian in Detroit wanted to hear."
Ridley moved seven times through the years, sometimes because restaurants closed or contracts fell through.
"It was like I was in the witness protection program," he jokes.
He made what he calls his final move to his Royal Oak location in the late 1980s.
"Mark is a survivor," says Rick Messina of Messina Baker Entertainment, the Los Angeles talent agency that handles the now famous Tim Allen and Drew Carey.
"He's successful because of his personality, and he didn't try to rule the world by opening 15 other clubs. He didn't get bogged down."
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At his club these days, the Rochester Hills resident is very hands-on. With 26 staffers, he keeps his club open at least five nights a week. If a show isn't going on, he's offering comedy classes for aspiring jokesters.
From mid-September through October, he locks in every act for the year ahead.
Coulier, who will perform on Ridley's stage in July, has learned you have to book the Castle early. "I tell him, he books so far ahead, they haven't even printed the calendars yet," he says, dumbfounded. "It's extremely anal."
Ridley calls the scheduling feat a production puzzle. "You have to make sure the energy is right, and that the headliner is not overshadowed by the other acts," he says.
The most difficult part of doing what he does, he states, is the day-to-day operations, "when you can't figure out why business is down."
He's working on new ways to keep money coming in, such as managing new young comics' careers (current protégé: J. Chris Newberg of Birmingham).
Just this year, the club has begun offering Chocolate Sundays, with an all-black-comic bill, and Blue Mondays, where material is all X-rated. He's even cooking up the first metro-area comedy festival with three other clubs for next July.
He acknowledges keeping people coming in the door is tougher than it was during the boom time of the 1980s.
"People are very choosey with their entertainment dollar. If it's either the groceries or comedy, it's going to be groceries."
But February's weekend club schedule has no gaps. Patrons will hear relationship-based, observational comedy, Ridley says, when they come to his place.
The great comics see the "flip side of life," he says. Two masters of it, Ridley believes, are Jerry Seinfeld and Richard Jeni.
He frowns at the suggestion of more political humor. "People get enough of that. They'd rather forget their troubles when they come here."
He was master of ceremonies for 14 years and still does it occasionally.
"I take the lazy man's way out and bounce off the audience."
He admits there was a time he wanted to be on Johnny Carson and keeps a tape of Carson mentioning Ridley's name when a "Tonight Show" comedian was booked later in the month at the Castle.
Ridley is known for having a good eye and ear when it comes to talent. Messina points out Ridley "always dealt with the local talent. Other club owners would just bring in (big acts) and run guys through."
Ridley understands treating the visiting comics well is smart for business, booking them into decent hotels."(Local comedian) Jill Washburn would tell about this horrible experience she had in Texas with bugs in the hotel room, guys hitting on her," he says. "It's tough to be out there."
Looking back, Ridley regrets not booking the controversial Sam Kinison when he had the chance in the 1980s, and wishes Richard Pryor could have played his place.
He harbors another dream.
"I would like to do for comedy in this area what Kid Rock and Eminem have done for rock."
You'll still find him in his club on Wednesdays watching youngsters on open-mike night. Just last year he caught a 16-year-old Canton kid who had that "Dennis Miller cynicism," Ridley says.
He pulled him aside and told him something he's told a lot of others before.
Don't quit.
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