Women Win the Face-off in Belgium

Show reviewed 5 March 2001

The Ligue d’Improvisation Belge (LIB – the French speaking Belgian Improvisation league) plays an ‘Impro match’ format, which is wildly popular in French speaking countries. The format, which to our knowledge is hardly played in non-French speaking countries, is modeled after an ice-hockey match: 2 teams of 6 players compete against each other, and play games based on suggestions drawn out of a hat by a Judge. The audience decides which team merits a point, and gets to throw slippers (yes, slippers) at the players (or the Judges) if they don’t like what they’re seeing. The Judges hand out faults during the games, and if a team accumulates 3 faults the other team gets an extra point (for a more complete overview of the format, see Show Formats in the Improv Tips section on www.improvland.com).

LIB has an excellent reputation: in 1999 they finished first in their World Championships and last year they just barely lost in the finals to the Canadians. They have a reputation of ‘risking’ to perform not only funny scenes, but also realistic, touching or dramatic work. Unfortunately, we caught them on a bad night.

We were supposed to see an international match Belgium-France, LIB playing a team from Paris. Somehow our reservations got mixed up and we came to see a ‘special’: a male team playing against a female team. Theatre Marni is a charming, though industrial looking outfit in the center of Brussels, which can seat about 200 people. The place was packed, musician Anne Wolfe warmed the audience with appropriately chosen French songs about ‘boys’ and ‘girls’, the Judges got their traditional Boos (and a couple of slippers) and all seemed ready and set for an enjoyable evening. We started worrying when the MC announced the players as ‘comedians & comediennes’ – and indeed that seemed to be their aspirations, for the most part.

Summary: scene work and storytelling were forgotten, offers were ignored, a lot of babbling, little action and pointless gagging. And certainly nothing dramatic or emotional.

A scene, titled Delicately Wrapped, 2 minutes, 1 player per team, started off interesting, when the wife announces she’s found a baby, delicately wrapped, on their doorstep. After which her hubby manages to find another baby in a cabinet, and throws it out of the window. Then, it turns out that the baby the wife’s found is not a baby, but a doll. It’s thrown out of the window too, and just before the Judges ended the game, hubby was trying to push his wife out of the window as well. And the point would be?

Another scene, titled Blood and Games, 14 minutes, unlimited number of players, started off vague but became interesting: a shy looking man and a freaky looking woman in some undefined place; there are dead bodies in a cupboard - human or animal, we never find out as these are promptly ignored. Then, it turns out to be 2 kids playing in an attic, while their respective mom and dad seem to be seducing each other in the garden. And then it gets confusing: the kinds can’t decide which stuffed teddybear to tear up ‘The big teddybear!’, ‘No, the small bear’ so they end up demolishing a toy snake, which then strangles the boy, or maybe not, they see/hear their respective parents making out in the shed, have a little quarrel about who might be who’s mum and who would be the other’s daddy, promptly forget about their parents and tear up some more animals. Meanwhile, in the shed, both lovers seem to have managed to tie up each other, change their minds and break free, after which Milady takes out a chain saw and removes daddy’s arm, and she buries him in the garden, just in time c’se her husband comes home and they decide to have dinner. Daughter comes to dinner, leaving her boyfriend in the attic, after which the dead lover barges in as a zombie. He’s sent to the attic, where he kills his son. We’re 10 minutes in the game, and the Judges mercifully stop the game, in order to get the multitude of slippers cleaned up – this procedure gives the players an opportunity to calm down and try and save the scene. They decide to send the daughter to harp class and all that previously happened is happily forgotten.

Mrs. D’hont tried to limit the damage wherever possible. A scene titled ‘As long as the mustard tastes fine’, which stranded in an endless discussion about how good or bad the mustard soup might be, was given some direction when she walked in and said, ‘Ah, the soup for table 4’, picked up the soup and walked it out of what we now knew was the kitchen into what we know saw as the restaurant. In another scene, titled ‘Mother’s Father’, to be played animalistic, Mrs. D’hont and Mrs. Gudule, both acting convincingly as hens were faced by a fish, and declared they ‘had been had by the adoption agency’. After which another very convincing rooster walked in, and then the scene spiraled downwards.

There were 2 vaguely interesting scenes. One was titled ‘One day I’ll see my dad’, in which 2 kids obviously had never seen their dads. The little boy claimed to be named Sandy Claus, and sure enough, his dad Santa Claus arrived to visit him. Unfortunately, we’d already had an overdose of kid characters in the previous scenes, and Santa’s speech seemed to be limited to HoHo-ing. The other interesting scene was titled ‘A Silence too long’, which the women had to play Shakespeare style. Again, Mrs. D’hont and Mrs. Gudule showed they could do more than just cardboard characters. The men won the point though, as they gagged their way trough their scene, in which everybody addressed everybody as ‘Mister’ and in which half of the characters ended up hanging themselves in a closet.

The players tried to make up the lack of scene work with gags, which obviously didn’t get them any farther. In a scene titled ‘2 Kilo’s of Mussels’ the players for once agreed: they were going to eat mussels. Then they decided to change their minds and enjoy the view, after which the rooster form the previous scene appeared and promptly disappeared again. Then a mermaid appeared, which prompted the players to decide they had a pan of mussels to eat… The audience loved the roosters, though.

It is hard to gauge what the audience though of the spectacle – they sure seemed to enjoy the gags. The Judges did try to keep some sort of order in the chaos and issued over 30 faults. Main Judge Mrs. Von Bibikow did an excellent job explaining why faults were issued, but her Words of Wisdom seemed to be thoroughly ignored by both teams.

At the end of the match, which was won by the women, Mrs. D’hont was appropriately awarded 3 stars by a local celebrity ‘star-spangler’. As Mr. Cuvelier, coach of the female team summarized at the end of it all: "this was quite interesting, but once a year is enough". We couldn’t agree more.

LIB can do much better. Let’s assume they just had a bad night and we’ll come back for more. Hopefully better.