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The Hot Karl
CIF Blue - The Playground
Friday, April 5, 2002
Reviewed by Jeff Catanese
The Hot Karl is made up of members of Chicago's ComedySportz. Performing so much corporate and family-friendly improv, they certainly have occasion to ask, "When do we get to perform improv that's just for us?" You know that kind of improv: self-indulgent, crass and usually filled with in-jokes that are so far in, they leave the audience completely in the dark. To that end, these performers regularly perform this show that rightfully went up on the CIF Blue stage.
Beginning with the audience-derived suggestion of "Taco Bell" the troupe provided little foreplay to the sex scene- and curse-laden stuff that was to come, however, the actual improv content fumbled like a high school sophomore at Make Out Point. Scenes were based on how many times the word fuck could be worked into the most mundane of scenarios and people were being asked to bend over desks with no provocation. Soon enough, the five performers would find their groove and put some cohesive scenes together, and, oh, yes, they did get nasty.
Heather Simms was the best actress of the bunch, and held a lot of the scenes together with her willingness to hang back and support a scene that she was not involved in, scoring especially big as a semi-retarded twin who had not seen "Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome." Although many scenes contained forced ideas, the group constantly held back from going all the way with the gross idea, until Zack Thompson and Katherine Gotsick rolled around on the floor sticking their goo covered fingers up each others asses, and made me feel like I was going to cough up a lung from laughing so hard. This idea went so far that Ms. Simms at one point told them to stop it, shouting "real life, stop mounting each other," until they did. Tim Chidester and Randy Smock both had good moments with some clever comic spins, but faltered when they tried to wedge tasteless bits into those moments.
The show was shoddily put together. A lot of the stage time was spent commenting on the scenes and what was wrong with them from the inside. No care was put into the relationships and story arc. But, with the rep they have for sharp, fun improvisation by day, indulging the post-midnight whims of these actors left me laughing deep into the early morning.