Despite the Many Wumpi...

Review by Jeff Catanese

  Show reviewed January 27, 2001

Featured players on  January 27th:

     Ciaran Sharpe

     Lauren Fisher

     Jody Miller

     Craig Liggeons

     Avish Parashar

     Mike Worth. 

The members of Polywumpus look sharp in their matching black jeans and denim shirts, but although they may have called each other about how they would dress before the show, much of the time they spent on stage they weren’t on the same page.  Although they were having a lot of fun, and somewhat able to translate that fun to the young crowd, the uneven talent and skill levels of the performers kept this show from being anything but your average short-form show.

A cast of six of the eleven members of Polywumpus performed in the show at The Brick Playhouse on the trendy South Street in Philadelphia.  They opened the show with an energy that they found difficult to sustain once the improvisation started.  Even in the introductions to the various games they adopted a casual demeanor which, although it made each member feel like "one of the gang," failed to present the production in an adequate manner.

This was exemplified by the introductions that were all but stolen by the rowdy crowd, and almost got completely out of hand.  In fact, the performers seemed on the verge of losing control of the audience several times.

A more skilled group might make up for these shortcomings with their improvisation, but Polywumpus wasn't up to the challenge.  In their opening game they challenge themselves to perform a scene without letting the letter "B" be heard anywhere within it.  As the scene progressed it became more and more apparent that most of the players were simply running the scene with no regard for whether or not they used a "B," then relied on the audience to buzz them out.

With ComedySportz being the only other short-form group in town, Polywumpus' set was shaded with many of the games that are associated with that group.  They performed "Five Things" with a great sense of fun, but without the skill to even have the spectators near the edges of their seats wondering whether or not they'll make all five.  A standout, as you may notice throughout this review, was Mike Worth who brought in some of the more clever mimes in order to convey simple ideas.  For instance, in order to get Lauren Fisher to understand that she was throwing a hamster against a wall he began dancing around while singing the melody from the popular web site Hamsterdance.com.  The audience burst into applause with recognition.

In the scene-based games they performed, the constant problem seemed to be the writing.  The acting skills of each performer was at least adequate all around, but just as a scene was starting to get rolling elements would get incorporated that had no place and/or made no sense to the scene.  A scene that used musical styles was good once the music started, and both Avish Parashar and Craig Liggeons handled the music well, but the scene they started from was bland and made no sense.  The input asked for was “something you might find at a supermarket,” and when they were offered “canned eel” they simply made it a scene about buying canned eel at a supermarket.

The group performed a scene in which they each established their status in relation to the other players and, despite the commitment to the game, it came off as more of a rehearsal exercise and went on way too long.  In performing the ever-present Half Scenes Ms. Fisher, Jody Miller and Ciaran Sharpe had their work cut out for them because they started with a scene that was difficult to follow, and was rife with inorganic offers, especially from Ms. Sharpe who for no apparent reason became violent only seconds into the scene.

Many of the problems with the show seemed to stem from an over-the-top yearning to please the audience.  During the musical styles scenes reggae was combined with ska, and worse, 80's pop was combined with disco.  Though these styles might be, in a sense, complementary, it seemed that the only reason these strange combinations were made was to allow more of the audience's suggestions into the game.  The same sorts of things happened in the lengthy gathering of inputs, particularly by Ms. Miller and Mr. Parashar.

For Ding! they even brought an audience member up on stage to hold the bell and thereby control the game.  A lack of full explanation of the game had the audience member "dinging" every other word until the actors were forced to ignore most of the "dings" in order to construct any sort of plot or relationships.

Mr. Worth seemed to be the glue that held the group together during the rough patches, and Mr. Liggeons showed a great control of his physical self and a terrific commitment to character, environment and situation (his rolling down a mountain stuck to a giant snowball was a show highlight), but the rest of the troupe seemed only to excel selectively.  Ms. Miller was terrific in Film Dub, but later didn't know what to do with the input of ennui.  Ms. Sharpe had a fun stage presence and ability to convey emotion, but seemed lost as a person made of Mylar, with a sorority girl for a leg in Party Quirks.  Mr. Parashar supported many scenes with ease, and created wonderful environments when called upon to do so, yet wandered endlessly around the stage when introducing a game.

The cerebral cleverness of some of Polywumpus' members went a long way in extracting laughs from the viewers, but they were never enough to save the individual scenes or the whole show.  A strange, yet somewhat representative moment happened at the end of the show when the group performed Story, Story, Die. As the audience yelled a resounding "DIE!" at her faux pas, Ms. Fisher seemed to be on the verge of tears.  It makes one wonder if we weren't seeing some issues leftover from a recent rehearsal.  Perhaps there are still a lot of issues that need be resolved in rehearsal.  Then Polywumpus might be a troupe to be reckoned with.