Untitled Blog Post
Saturday night I saw a preview of the new Untitled Groundlings Project. Having never been to an improv show before, I wasn’t sure what to expect, and I was kept in the dark for a long time. Literally. The start of the show was announced and the slightly too loud band began to play. For a long time. Shadowy figures moved about in the, well, dark. The lights came up on a mildly amusing but very short skit about a two-member band and its longtime hanger-on fan that it can’t get rid of but who drives all its other fans away, but then we were plunged into darkness yet again. In the first 10 minutes of the show, it seems we were in the dark more often than not.
The evening eventually picked up speed—and laughs. In “Visiting Hours,” written by Jim Cashman, a youth suffering from leukemia (Michael Naughton) is granted a dying wish in the form of his favorite pro baseball player (Cashman), who lets him in on The Secret. “Driving Mr. Daisy” features writer Tim Brennen along with Cashman taking a skewed look—or not—at driving in this fair city; Brennen’s aggressive nonchalant DMV tester is great, and Cashman’s timid novice driver quickly and hilariously joins the ranks of pseudo road-ragers. “Exploration” is over the top, but in a good way, poking fun at how actors get overinvolved in their characters’ psyches. Some “acting” was apparent, but the point came across and was well taken. Michaela Watkins gave a great characterization in “Hung Jury,” which she co-wrote; her distinctive speech pattern made the skit. In Ariane Price’s “A Lot Going On,” Price plays an annoying airline passenger. When Brennen’s character tells her to “shut the fuck up,” garnering one of the biggest laughs of the night, fellow passenger Steve Little’s reaction—faking sleep but laughing hysterically and turning red—whether intentional or not, is brilliant.
Two pieces written by Jeremy Rowley were the highlights of the night: “The Saigon Way” and “300.” In “Saigon,” the writer gives us Vietnamese motivational speaker Meng Duc Peng, toying with the audience and exhorting them to “think positive,” unless you have a “terrible fae,” as someone in the first row apparently did, and then you’re screwed. “300″ closed the night on a high note, with a civic light opera musical staging of 300. While it wasn’t very musical per se, it did give us the hardest laugh of the night—even for those of us who haven’t seen the film yet but only trailers—despite relying on homoeroticism for most of its humor.
I found the one fully improvised skit (a “new choice” exercise) funny but a bit disappointing, as the two actors tended to ultimately resort to profanity or sexual subject matter on their second or third “new choices.” Not that I have anything against profanity or sex, but they shouldn’t be the fallback for cast members of one of the country’s premiere improv companies.
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