Sam Adams Couldn't Save Improv

The challenge with introducing culture to one's life is the too often chance that culture can be stupid. High culture, like art museums, high budget plays at established theaters, concerts with musicians in tuxedos, is generally a safe bet, but we've all visited these cocoons of theoretical criticism and snobbery. My concern here is working-class culture, not alternative theater with pierced nubiles dangling from hooks while reciting free-form poetry, but work intended to reach a wider audience, mainstream entertainment as an alternative to TV and movies. Slight culture, but safe.

Portland provides myriad venues for such pseudo-culture, and Amber and I attended one such event on Saturday night. I'm sure there are more exciting things to do in a city on a Saturday night than visit a newborn stage and its sketch/improv cast, but hey, it was free and we are cheap.

We started the night at Old Town Pizza, which oddly, is not in Old Town; The original Old Town Pizza truly is in Old Town, but we were on Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard east of the river. This Old Town Pizza, an extension of the original, was merely decked out in faux-old town style: wood beams, copper fixtures with a slight patina, and a dark atmosphere despite the crisp construction of a nearly brand-new building. Dinner was fine, eating at the bar, accidentally stealing lemonade, fearing a drunk woman celebrating her 30th birthday. Oh, we had rosemary chicken and garlic pizza, and I sampled a Caldera Pale Ale with a bit of a bite. Just a few doors down stood the Curious Comedy Theater, our night's main attraction.

The Portland Area Theater Alliance (yes, they have established an alliance fearing they would be booted out of Portland by the Braindead Conglomerate during the highly elaborate voting ceremony) joined forces with other national theater groups for free nights of theater to entice viewers out of their homes and away from their television sets. It worked on us and, judging by the audience, several others, as well. Unknowingly, we attended both the free performance and the pay performance. We didn't know they were having two shows in one night, but I'm glad we attended both. The adage, "You get what you pay for" seems more than applicable in this case.

"Will Work for Change," a minimalist sketch comedy performance with a smidgen of improvisation, made me laugh more than a few times. Most of the sketches were well-written and well-performed. The troupe criticized Portland cyclists, made light of medical marijuana, skirted subtly ironic turns of phrase, and twisted the 700 billion dollar Wall Street bailout into a PTA sketch. Some sketches fell flat, but overall, the show was solid and the performance strong. I especially appreciated the human-size cigarette brandishing its middle-fingers. Once the "Change" troupe left the stage, however, the show fell apart.

The concept seems intriguing, but clearly reveals a number of pitfalls only the strongest performers could avoid and overcome. "Sam Adams, Sam Adams, Mayor Ex Machina" is an entirely improvised musical. Yeah, improvised musical. Combine the challenges of acting, improv, and lyric writing, fold in the fickle, comedic tastes of a mixed audience and BRACE YOURSELF FOR DISASTER. What the hell are you thinking? Short sketch improv is hard enough; making jokes in character without always referring to your screw-ups or retreating to some static character that more-often-than-not draws a chuckle from the audience is hard. I tried improv in high school acting class and sucked; I wasn't funny. I wasn't even interesting. Why make it even harder by incorporating song while trying to develop a story line for a play? Are you starting to see the pitfalls I mentioned earlier?

At the start of the play, an actor asked, "What's the motivating factor in your life?" Some jackass with too much time on his retired hands shouted out, "Anger." Meditate or something, man. Let it go. I'm sure everyone's forgotten about that baseball game you blew back in second grade and your dad really did love you. You're not the reason he drank. I have the number of a good therapist to work through all of this. From here on out, we both feared the worst; this was going to be ugly. Anger shouldn't drive anything but a Tarantino film.

It just so happens, the displaced mayor of Portland finds secret passages throughout the city and tries to exact his revenge by planting explosive charges in his personal, underground sidewalk and sink the town into the open mouth of Hell. Why not? We've had politicians with similar plans. The plot, further thickened by an age reducing facial cream and subsequent addiction to said cream, stumbled around for an hour with poorly constructed songs about pee in a cup, going down, down, down, and selling out to L'Oreal. Someone's face melted off; I thought it was the mayor, but it was one guy playing two roles. Sounds great! This bleeding and flailing raccoon of a play was finally smacked in the head with a shovel by Sam Adams and sent to God's wilderness preserve. The new mayor, Sam Adams, magically had a time machine and liked to eat bombs for breakfast. Way to wrap it up. Bravo! Huh? Even though it was free, I paid with something more precious than money. Part of me died.

I can appreciate improv actors stumbling through lines, or forgetting character names when an entire hour-long performance is made up on the fly, but when songs don't rhyme or follow any beat, that's just too much. Call off the song, shut down the Casio, and write a god-damned script. It can't be any harder than making up this crap.

I actually feel bad writing this. They tried hard; they really did and I appreciate that. I couldn't get up there and prance around, making up lyrics as I go, but neither could they. And that's my point. The entire concept of an improvised musical is absolutely ridiculous. Perhaps, it's the ridiculous to which I cannot relate. Things did not make sense in Monty Python, but John Cleese was funny and everything worked out fine. Maybe the stars weren't aligned on October 25th for the Curious Comedy Theater, or maybe I can't stand poor performances; I don't know, but I wouldn't hire this pack of Whose Line Is It, Anyway hacks for to clean Port-A-Potties.