If you’ve ever spent a Saturday evening home alone watching a “Whose Line Is It, Anyway?” marathon on ABC’s Family Channel (not..that…this DCist…has), you probably know that when it comes to improv theatre, it’s hard to predict what’s going to happen. Actors never know what kind of suggestions they’ll get from the audience, and how well their team will respond under pressure. This can make for exciting, if uneven, entertainment, and Washington Improv Theater appears to be a troupe of pros who do an admirable job dealing with curve balls and spontaneity.
In “Misfit Toys”, two actors – Rebecca Seelig and Mark Chalfant – cultivate a show around just a handful of audience suggestions, mostly involving childhood toys. Saturday night’s show centered around a mildly dysfunctional family, including a disapproving mother-in-law, a tension-plagued couple, and two squabbling siblings. Audience suggestions involving everything from spiders to go-go boots were given prominent placement in the sketch. Seelig has a nice deadpan, and Chalfant an appealing childishness about him, and both do a fine job transitioning between characters. Some scenes were a blast, such as a store-window conversation between a pair of pants and the aforementioned boots – others, such as a visit to a doctor’s office for chicken pox, were more strained.
But the night’s real highlight was Washington Improv Radio Theater, modeled after old-time, melodramatic radio detective serials. Saturday evening’s performance featured the exploits of “dashing” detective Dirk Johnson (Zhubin Parang), policewoman and former Johnson lover (that came out wrong) Captain Case (Molly Woods), as they took on Johnson’s archnemesis Scott Cannon (Mike Bass) and his aptly-named sidekick, Villain. Audience suggestion created the crime – an arson case eventually headquartered at L’Enfant plaza. Though occasionally a bit too amused by their own antics, the comedy team’s over-the-top touches, from silly character quirks to the awkward sexual tension between Case and Johnson, to a hilarious climax set in a Home Depot, showed that WIT can truly think on their feet.
WIT is a quick, cheap option for a night out – shows run about an hour and a half, and cost between $5-$12, depending on the show. Keeping in the holiday spirit, their other December show, “Seasonal Disorder” runs at 8 p.m. before “Misfit Toys” and “WIRT”, which are double-billed as the company’s “Late Night Potluck”. All three shows run through Dec. 30; for more information, visit the troupe’s web site.
