The Game Show Show
…and Stuff
Created by James Anthony Zoccoli
and Anderson Lawfer
Mercury Theater, 3745 N. Southport (map)
thru Dec 31 | tickets: $15 | more info
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Get rowdy…and stuff…on Southport Avenue
British Stage Company presents
The Game Show Show…and Stuff!
Review by J.H. Palmer
I had the opportunity to see The Game Show Show… and Stuff back in July when they opened for Alien Queen at the Metro, and I was expecting the same raucous good time last weekend at the Mercury Theater. Unfortunately, this is a case of the wrong show in the wrong venue. As an opener for Alien Queen, the late-night show that spoofs the Alien films while simultaneously mashing the film storylines with the Queen catalog, and has reached cult proportions, it’s a great time; the audience is already primed and ready to participate in ludicrous games like having two contestants dress up as a hobos and run around the audience with empty beer cups to see who can collect the most money in one minute (with all proceeds donated to charity), but within the rarified confines of the newly renovated Mercury Theater, what I experienced as funny and expansive feels like a small show on a big stage, and slightly potty mouthed.
The show is the brainchild of James Anthony Zoccoli, who is also the host of the show, and who has said that the show combines aspects of shows like “Double Dare”, “Jackass”, “The Price is Right”, and “Soul Train”. “The Price is Right” gets spoofed in a game called “whip it out,” where audience members win a dollar if they happen to have an item in their pocket or their purse that host Anderson Lawfer requests from them, and throughout the game Zoccoli is implored to “tumble that thing,” (a bingo spinner) to pick audience names at random for their turn as contestants. Other games include “Dead or Alive,” where contestants guess whether a particular celebrity is still living (names used the night I saw the show included Carroll O’Connor, Michael Landon, and Abe Vigoda); a segment where people get onstage and read sext messages from their cellphones; and a game called “Eat Me Out” that has a pair of blindfolded contestants picking plastic toys out of a bowl of Jell-O with their teeth.
Any of these games would and could be funny and entertaining, but there are a number of factors working against the success of the show in its current venue: unless the audience is sold-out, or especially raucous, it’s hard to get people excited about coming onstage to compete against each other to win stupid prizes. On the night I went there were perhaps 40 people in the audience, and while that was enough to keep the show going, it required making people get up out of their seats, squash past their fellow aisle mates, and finally, sheepishly, climb the stairs of the stage. At a standing-room only venue like the Metro, the transition between audience member and game show participant is much smoother, and since people have been drinking, they’re much more likely to volunteer to do so. Also working against GSS at the Mercury Theater is the kind of prizes being handed out; at the Metro people won a “second-hand, second-rate trophy for some high school sporting event,” but in the more legitimate venue of The Mercury Theater, they have a sponsor: the Midtown Athletic Club, who provide prizes in the form of gift certificates for tennis lessons and the like, which makes for better prize, but not as much fun.
Things managed to ramp up by the end of the show, during the “Super Secret Ultra Super Mega Final Round”, where finalists compete against each other in a dance-off, with the winning pair decided by audience applause. Both couples onstage received the same amount of applause after their appointed time limits, leading to the need for a sudden death round which was so outrageous that it made me genuinely laugh for the first time since I’d taken my seat. Encouraged by Lawfler, one participant began removing his clothes; slapping the stage floor with his belt with such force that if I didn’t know better I would have thought he was trying to kill something. Similarly encouraged, the second couple also upped their dance game by removing clothes. In that final segment the audience and the stage finally synched up; it was a shame that it didn’t happen sooner, but I was glad to see it happen.
This isn’t the first time that going legit has ruined what was funny about a show; any fan of the HBO series “Flight of the Conchords” can tell you that Season 1, when the musical duo were struggling, is much funnier than Season 2, when they achieve status and fame. I hate to not recommend a show that I’ve seen in other venues and that I know can be funny, so I’ll say this: if you go, bring a crowd, be loud, and be prepared to participate.
Rating: ★★
The Game Show Show… and Stuff continues through December 31 at The Mercury Theater, 3745 N. Southport (map), with performances Fridays and Saturdays at 11 p.m. Tickets are $15, and are available MercuryTheaterChicago.com. More information at gameshowshow.com (Running time: 1 hour with no intermission)
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