If you saw my interview with Brad Sherwood, you got an idea of what to expect from Colin Mochrie and Brad on their Asking For Trouble tour stop at Proctor’s Theatre in Schenectady, NY. Touring together for 23 years, their brand of Improvisational Comedy, improv for short, relies completely on audience participation to direct the direction of their skits. I first became aware of them on the improv competition show, “Whose Line Is It Anyway?” with host Drew Carey. On the show, either the audience, or the host, would pick one of two of the “competitors” and give them a set up for them to perform and award points, solely at the discretion of the host. Extrapolating this into a stage show at a theater like Proctor’s multiplies the scenarios to an infinite number of possibilities. To limit this a little, the duo have a set of basic set-ups, but the audience participates, either in developing what is going on in the scene, or as a participant in the scene itself, or both.
In the first scenario, Brad and Colin selected a pair of audience members to pose them as puppets as they worked their way through a suggested scene of “bank robbery”. Although the helpers did their best to move the “puppets” in sync with the scene, it also led to various poses and movements that were comical, if not a bit uncomfortable (more on that later) as they “moved” their way through the scene. The duo would then fit their dialog to whatever pose, or movement, in which they found themselves. It was sometimes hard to photograph as I was laughing as much as the audience to their various predicaments. Next up, a pair of audience members acted as “Alexa” and “Siri” as they helped Brad and Colin get to a Checkers Tournament in Canada. The “virtual assistants” (VA’s) were told that, like the real life VA’s whatever they say would be taken as fact and the duo would react accordingly. While the “answers” by one of the VA’s weren’t always easy to work with, it did lead to one of the funniest moments as Colin had a choice word for “Alexa” after being called bald. Next up, several audience members were brought on stage to ask various academic questions while the duo would answer, either by each taking every other word or both at the same time. Since they mostly had no idea about the real answer, it was impressive and funny to see them lead each other to a plausible, if not correct, answer.
“Sound Effect” saw a pair of audience members providing, as the title suggests, the sounds of the action during the space travails of a pair of “Robot Dog Groomers” on a dangerous, alien world, with phone calls, space ship travel and alien world exploration, all while taming the robot dogs, which included destroying the alien broadcast tower, tampering with the normal functioning of the dogs and making them mean (as suggested by the sounds provided and reaction from Brad and Colin). These kinds of outlandish scenarios, provided by the audience, and elevated by the minds of Brad and Colin, made the tasks of the sound effects crew that much harder, and funnier.
In every city they stop in, because they generally don’t have any time to investigate their surroundings, they ask the audience to provide some facts about the area, which they then turn around and tell a story using these facts. At any time, one may stop and ask for an explanation of something the other one said, and they in turn, would have to make up a song, based on music, randomly selected by, Tour Manager, Ethan Ullman, from an IPad off stage.
At the end of the night, the duo would make up a song summing up everything that occurred during the show. The lyrics referencing highlights of some of the funniest bits from each of the sketches, such as, the first set-up I referred to where Colin was put in such an uncomfortable pose that he ended up with bruised testicles and the aforementioned comment to “Alexa” regarding his less than full head of hair.
While the 2646 seat Proctor’s Theater was maybe 2/3 full, those in attendance were treated to some of the funniest moments I’ve seen. It was obvious these two performers, having been together so long, their patter was as easy as if things had been scripted, except, being improvised, the reactions of the two were genuine to each other. As Brad mentioned in our interview, we all improvise everything we do every day is improvised, from our conversations to our interactions in general, and this is what it appeared to be as well, like two friends having a conversation, only what they are conversing about is a random suggestion from the audience. Because of this, each show is completely different from any other one they’ve ever done. Keep your eye out for their next visit, the show is wall to wall laughs, so much so, my ribs hurt the next day, and after looking around during the show, I don’t think I’m the only one.
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