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| CIF
2001 Supplement
Reviews Land of the Karaoking Improvisors Upright Citizen's Brigade's ASSSCAT Whose Chorus Line Is It Anyway?
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Whose Live Is It Anyway? Whose Line Is It Anyway (Los Angeles) Review by
William McEvoy If you came into the
“Whose Line Is It Anyway” show with the expectation that you’d get
a peek at what these veteran shortform players do when not bound by the
restrictions of TV (some cutting-edge improv), you’d be disappointed. But then, this expectation isn’t realistic and it wasn’t
what was promised. If you
came in with the expectation of seeing these same veterans give you a
sense of what it would be like to sit in the studio audience of WLIIA,
you’d have gotten exactly what you wanted, and of course, what was
promised. And it laid to
rest the myth that the television show needs to tape for two to four
hours to get a half hour of good material.
They may have to get 30 minutes of clean material; but funny,
that’s covered. Featured was show
regular Colin Mochrie, along with frequent guests Brad Sherwood and Ian
Gomez (currently seen on ABC’s Norm).
Many of the structures used were familiar to TV audiences,
including “Greatest Hits” and “Sound Effects” Other improv
standards were used as well, like a Changing Styles scene, and
two-headed expert. Mr. Gomez showed a
great gift for physical comedy, belying his stout frame, at one point
tumbling across the floor and later wrestling with and then giving birth
to a chair. Mr. Sherwood
was verbally adept, calling back scenes from the previous two shows of
the evening, and being gruelingly pimped in a game of “New Choice”
(a form of Ding!) to make sometimes eight or nine new choices.
Mr. Mochrie did some great support work throughout. Fun was had with
audience volunteers, first in a game of Puppeteer, which pleasingly did
not end in a mutual grope, and a sound effects game, which included a
twelve year-old audience member who did some really nice work. Even improv snobs
would have found it hard not to enjoy this set on the level of pure fun.
The improv wasn't always perfect, (scene work was often
sacrificed for laughs) and wasn't always pretty, (in a changing styles
scene, Mamet was performed only as a series of curses) but it was
popular. Whose Line live in
Chicago, like the TV show, didn't surprise, but didn't disappoint,
either.
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