Ever since Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert used their shows to announce the Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear, a palpable sense of anticipation could be felt among D.C. residents.
On Oct. 29, the Washington Improv Theater took advantage of this excitement by hosting “Moderate-ly Funny: a Pregame Show of Improv Comedy” at the Artisphere in Rosslyn, Va.
The act consisted of D.C.-based improv groups Shock and Awesome, Dr. Fantastic and iMusical.
The first improv group of the night was the trio Shock and Awesome. They were also the most topical, referring to themselves as the nation’s first ever “federally funded and federally mandated improv group.”
They played traditional improv games renamed in politically charged ways. For example, a game where two performers each guess another’s secret was called “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.”
The group worked well together and had some very inspired moments. They were witty, well practiced and most importantly, they let their political angle compliment their act rather than overtake it.
Dr. Fantastic was the next to perform, and their entrance was certainly attention grabbing. They flipped chairs, yelled at the audience and billed themselves as “the greatest improv group ever.”
It looked at first like they were a self-parody group, as their first few attempts at performing audience suggestions were obviously deliberately awful. Eventually, however, they dropped the incompetence act and performed the best improv seen that night. Moving seamlessly from one scene to the next, their antics brought them everywhere from a professional hide-and-seek team to flute making elves.
Each member of the group had an equal number of brilliant lines, and their obvious comfort with each other showed in the way they built each scene from a few generic movements and lines to a fleshed out and supremely funny piece of sketch comedy.
It was obvious that the next and final group was something different when they brought a keyboardist out to accompany them. They were called iMusical. As the group performed a standard long form improv skit from audience suggestions (“sewage” and “cryogenics” this time), the keyboardist tracked the rising and falling action of the scene with an appropriate melody. Eventually, one member onstage started singing and a full and improvised musical number followed. The pattern repeated in the style of a real musical until all the various plot threads were tied up.
Anybody who has worked on a musical knows how much time and effort they take to put together, and the fact that this group created stories and songs that both sounded good and actually made sense on the spot is nothing short of phenomenal.
There was a problem with the performance, however, and it was not with the performers themselves. The problem lay in the fact that improv and music simply do not mix. Although the songs themselves were almost uniformly brilliant, the lead-up to them felt forced. Every non-singing action had to not only make sense in context but also eventually lead in to a song. This, combined with the fact that the members of iMusical did not seem to have the same familiarity and tightness of a group like Dr. Fantastic, led to long sections of dragging where the audience barely seemed to chuckle. iMusical clearly has an enormous amount of talent, but their choice of format runs a dangerous risk of becoming just a gimmick.
Each of the groups had their own distinct style without stepping on each other’s toes. It kept the comedy fresh and the audience interested.
thescene@theeagleonline.com
