The group welcomed the audience with beat boxing and freestyling in a delightfully “Bad Rap,” immediately reassuring the crowd that they had made the correct decision in spending their Friday evening with Wilmington’s only improv team.
After soliciting a series of adjectives and professions from the audience (the improv favorite “proctologist” included), the group began a round of “Party Quirks.” The party host hilariously struggled to guess her eclectic guest list: a dyslexic bongo player, kinky engineer and damp proctologist. In the skit “New Choice,” two members of Fearless Improv conversed and were interrupted by a third member who shouted new choice when the spoken word was not to his liking. Beginning as two women talking about their children playing in a treehouse, the conversation skipped from bananas to boogers to Red Robin’s endless fries.
At this point in the show, the audience was ready and willing to follow the improv team down any winding road they wandered. A song which began as an ode to retirement and ended as a request for cream cheese at a bagel shop. In one skit, a couple describing scenes from their vacation to snow covered Buffalo, NY transitioned from a football huddle to a stampede at Walmart. Starting as a scene from an Olympic volleyball game, a round of “Freeze Tag” jumped to the conjuring of magic spells. However, the skit “La Ronde” perfectly encapsulated the raucous randomness of the evening.
In “La Ronde,” characters move in and out the scene, but never change as in other improv skits such as “Freeze Tag.” This allows the characters to develop and the team to illustrate their ability to play off each other, which Fearless Improv achieved with much success. Two members began as birds, contemplating the lack of freedom yet comfort found within the bars of their cage. Others floated in and out of the scene as the birds’ owner and son, a disgruntled neighbor, and animal right’s activist/Grammy-winning musician Sarah McLachlan. The audience learned of one bird’s compulsion to eat when anxious and the limits of the songstress’ love of animals. Truly, the skit was the climax of the show.
By the final skit, a recap of the evening sung over the chords of a blues tune, it was apparent that the show was filled with unanticipated swerves in topic. However, that is the essence of great improv, which Fearless Improv skillfully accomplished.
For information about Fearless Improv’s upcoming performances, visit http://city-theater.org/fearlessimprov.
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