Also: Happy birthday, Shakespeare

[bironic]

Speaking of ways to celebrate National Poetry Month, on Friday ellen_fremedon, recrudescence, new friend bloodygoodgirl and I went to see The Improvised Shakespeare Company, who'd popped over from Chicago for one night/two shows. Excellent times! The all-male troupe selects a title from suggestions thrown out by the audience and then spends 60 to 75 minutes improvising a complete play in quasi-Elizabethan English, often rhyming and sometimes even in meter, without props or costumes. Plus they incorporate tropes from Shakespeare, a bonus I hadn't been expecting; our play, "Bed of Thorns," featured mistaken identity, cross-dressing, a Polonius-like lecturing father, the wooing of a lady in a garden, a murder plot, a silly party song and a misplaced turkey. Also a servant named Humble and a pair of "Frenchmen" with Spanish names and exaggerated pan-European-into-Russian accents.

They joked, they punned, they clowned, they constructed impressive couplets on the fly, they broke for anachronistic asides at appropriate moments. Some managed to play two roles in the same scene. They cracked us and occasionally one another up. (It was fun to watch the troupe members on the sides of the stage laugh when they were watching their companions perform.) They sometimes struggled to finish lines or find rhymes, and rather than feeling awkward that was often made to be funny too, especially when other troupe members jumped in or when they chose something utterly ridiculous because it was the only phrase that fit. And what began in the prologue as a binary man/woman love story ended with one guy falling for another guy posing as a woman (even after learning he was not a woman) and what looked like it was going to be a happy FMM poly marriage. Then things took a sudden turn for the tragic and everybody died. Like, everybody. (Stabbings purposeful and accidental, suicide by tryptophan allergy, and a hanging with the intestines of one of the recently dead as they'd used up all the invisible daggers and swords. All within maybe two minutes.) Except the blind seer. He survived to deliver the moral.

I'd warn for spoilers, but as the lead troupe member (who sort of looked like Joseph Morgan from The Vampire Diaries) pointed out during the intro, we were treated to the world premiere -- "assuming a linear theory of time, that is" -- and also the only performance of "Bed of Thorns" the world will ever know.

Good times had by all. Just so impressive, creative and fun. No wonder bloodygoodgirl used to see them so often when she lived in Chicago. Recommended if they're ever in a town near you!

Comments

[cincodemaygirl.livejournal.com]

That sounds amazing! I am super sorry I missed it. Hopefully they'll come back!

[bironic.livejournal.com]

IAWTC. :)

[chocolate-frapp.livejournal.com]

I saw them on TV a few years ago. They're hilarious!

[bironic.livejournal.com]

Cool! I browsed their online video collection and didn't find any of the clips representative of the experience we had, plus some were too quiet to hear. I wonder if the TV appearance you saw is accessible anywhere.

[chocolate-frapp.livejournal.com]

they had a DVD I rented off netflix a few years ago, it's probably still available.

[bironic.livejournal.com]

Ooh. *checks* Hm, don't see it there, but they do have one by the Reduced Shakespeare Company (The Complete Works of Shakespeare Abridged (http://dvd.netflix.com/Movie/The-Complete-Works-of-William-Shakespeare-Abridged/60028943?strkid=1088487872_4_0&strackid=7be28e86418a9306_4_srl&trkid=222336)), which is hilarious in a different way.

[chocolate-frapp.livejournal.com]

oh, shit, that must have been who i was thinking of. (headdesk)

[thirdblindmouse.livejournal.com]

That sounds fabulous! I'm so envious. I really should have seen more improv while I was living in Chicago.

I used to attend every Gilbert & Sullivan operetta the Harvard & Radcliffe Gilbert & Sullivan Players put on, and half the time we'd opt to see the Hack Night performance, because you never knew who would end up with whom (and this is G&S, so everyone gets paired off by the end) and whose tragic ending would be reversed or made stranger than ever before.

[bironic.livejournal.com]

Hack Night! I like it. Although I had an incredibly uncomfortable introduction to Gilbert & Sullivan and haven't attempted watching any of their operettas again, so I'm not sure how I'd respond to what you describe.

[cincodemaygirl.livejournal.com]

I am kind of dying to hear about your G&S trauma if you feel like telling it! /o?

[bironic.livejournal.com]

It involved watching the movie Topsy-Turvy, my first exposure to Gilbert & Sullivan ^ETA: other than a Simpsons parody, while trapped in a dorm room with a guy I hadn't realized I was sort of on a date with, who kept inviting me to move to his bed with him, while his roommate was in the other bed, and Topsy-Turvy was already the second movie we were watching where I would have been happy to flee after the first. So really it's not Gilbert & Sullivan's fault, but I didn't enjoy the singing parts of the movie either and haven't been moved to revisit their works since then. *sheepish smile*

[thirdblindmouse.livejournal.com]

Oh, eesh, I see why that wouldn't be a pleasant introduction to G&S.

I've been exposed to it since I was too small to remember (I was crushed when I lost my wooden sword at the theater one year), so even though it's an acquired taste and made of pop culture references a century out of date, I laugh at all the jokes. (The music, on the other hand, is timeless; Sullivan didn't get knighted for being mediocre. I could spend all day listening to the overtures on YouTube.)

[roga.livejournal.com]

That sounds amazing! I will definitely have to see those guys one day.

[bironic.livejournal.com]

I think they would be up your alley, for sure.

Also: one of your recent pix is my current desktop! The one with the yellow wildflower bloom against a blurred purple-ish background. So pretty.