Original Improv Gladiators
at The Cornservatory, 4210 N. Lincoln (map)
thru May 12 | tickets: $12 | more info
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Not-so-original improv
Corn Productions presents
Original Improv Gladiators: Season 16
Review by K.D. Hopkins
Chicago is a fertile ground for the art that is improvisational comedy. Many of the greats in the comic stratosphere began here in front of the tough Chicago audience. If you can make us laugh, you can have them rolling in the aisles in other towns. Improv is a science and it is not for the dilettante thinking that it would be lark. The Original Improv Gladiators: Season 16 is a competition to get an original improv group its own four-week show at the Cornservatory.
I went to see week two of the battle for supremacy in the delicate field of making people laugh until their sides hurt. Contending teams went before panels of judges who presumably are some sort of experts or teachers in the field of Improv. There was Team Starch Sadness, Team Fiesta Forever, Team The Joseph Gordon Leavitt’s and the Cornservatory members as Team Gladiators.
The teams come out and ask the audience for a key subject from which to start the proceedings. Gogurt, syphilis, and other suggestions were bandied about for the sake of art. I was decidedly underwhelmed by most of the sketches. I am not easily offended and absolutely love a great fart or poop joke. The baser the better if it is done well – and of course it has to be funny.
The lovely emcee Michaela was quite funny in her introduction: her tale of wanting to be just like her childhood heroine-Punky Brewster. The timekeeper was endearing in the personage of Frau Pussy, a tall lanky dude in pseudo SS get up with a broken heart armband. She carries a whip, a bicycle horn, and wears a tight leather skirt with a decidedly male protuberance accent. Now that is funny, much like Milton-Berle-in-a-dress funny. But what followed was not so much.
Team Starch Sadness did a so-so riff off of the product Gogurt, which is yogurt in a tube geared toward primary school kids. It turned into a rather weak spin on eating toothpaste ending with a schoolyard fight. Meh.
Team Fiesta Fresh won the audience vote by applause for some amusing takes on medical marijuana and an icky veer into cancer jokes. It could have been funny but the timing was not all that great.
Team The Joseph Gordon Leavitt’s were in my opinion the funniest with their physical comedy and passably funny poop gag.
The house team, The Gladiators, were the weakest ones of the group. If they were the team by which to be compared, then all of the competitors should get a four-week show and give the house team some lessons.
The premise and characters on The Original Improv Gladiators is potentially funny if you remember the old “American Gladiators” or “Circus of the Stars” shows. Being loud and in-your-face physical worked for Sam Kinison twenty years ago. It was like watching a bunch of teenagers fighting for attention. The characters were stock and boring: The twin lesbian sisters who make out-seen it; the pimp-walking Latina gangsta girl has been done to death. In fact, any pimp-walking gangsta girl has been done to death. The head rolling and duck mouth badass shtick is so over and needs a fresh take.
