Tennessee Williams UnScripted

Reviewed by Lyle Zimskind
The Falcon Theatre
Through July 31

RECOMMENDED

Discussing humor in the theater, Stephen Sondheim once commented that “It’s always better to be funny than clever.” Getting an audience to admire the smart work they’re watching up on stage is one thing; getting big loud laughs from them is something else. For the last ten years Los Angeles’s phenomenal Impro Theatre Company has consistently been doing both with its trademark series of hilarious UnScripted plays based on various cinematic, literary and theatrical genres.

This summer, the Impro troupe is reviving the Tennessee Williams UnScripted show that it debuted in 2009. A rotating cast of seven performers starts off by requesting audience members to name the handed-down heirlooms in their family’s possession. These items then become the initial point of inspiration for the mock (but full-length and dramatically coherent) Tennessee Williams play the ensemble devises on the spot. Right after intermission, the players again approach the audience to ask which of the characters they’ve just created should begin the play’s second act.

Familiarity with Williams’ originals is nowise a prerequisite for enjoying the brilliantly funny inventiveness of this troupe (though there are often a number of his plays mounted around town if you want to brush up). Some of the Unscripted characters display the conspicuous traits of such iconic figures as Blanche Dubois from Streetcar or Big Daddy from Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, and of course they all sport lilting Southern accents.

More significant is how expertly these improvised plays capture — and gently but pointedly lampoon — the thematic tropes and atmospheric hallmarks of the target playwright’s oeuvre. Dark personal secrets are implied, then obliquely revealed. Inappropriate lust smolders beneath genteel expressions of social convention. The dynamics of raw power play out between family members. Or at least that’s what happened the night we attended. Since every performance features a brand new play, you’ll likely see something totally different.

A large part of the fun is watching the performers pick up on the cues intentionally (or inadvertently) provided by their fellow improvisers, then using them to spin out significant subplots or entirely new directions in the main story line. This technique may give rise to incongruous or unlikely scenarios. (At our performance, for instance, the play somehow ended up taking place at a mountain resort…in Florida. But the ensemble gamely went with it.)  Technical “improvisers” Alex Caan and Madison Goff play right along too, with in-the-moment sound and lighting effects that both feed off of and subtly impel the performers’ onstage choices.

Several of the popular comedy improv venues around town, such as Upright Citizens Brigade or the Groundlings, employ a format called the “Harold” in which, after a half hour or so of short, unrelated sketches, the finale recapitulates some thematic elements introduced in the earlier scenes. What Impro does every night is much more difficult and ultimately more impressive, in that virtually every moment in each 90-minute show becomes a structural building block in the architecturally sound dramatic edifice that the ensemble is charged with creating.

Accomplishing this feat every time, while adhering to the spirit and tone of the genre they are emulating, is the clever part. Bringing down the house over and over again is the gloriously impossibly funny part.

Falcon Theatre, 4252 Riverside Drive, Burbank.  Fri.-Sat., 8 p.m;. Sat.-Sun., 4 p.m.; through July 31.  (818) 955-8101, falcontheatre.com.  Running time: one hour and 45 minutes with an intermission