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Peer Reviews
The Indicators present
ASAP: Coming Soon, an Evening of Sketch Comedy
Written and Directed by The Indicators
Reviewed by Cory Vaughn
Entire contents are copyright © 2008 Cory
Vaughn. All rights reserved.
Live from Louisville, it's Saturday
Night!!!!
No, not really, but ASAP:
Coming Soon, the latest
concoction by University of Louisville-based improv/comedy
group The Indicators, has sort of the same feel
to it.
You have one weekend left to catch college-age
Louisville's favorite guilty pleasure in their
new collection of twenty-five madcap original (and
sometimes not-so-original) sketches — some
hits, some misses, some not quite so much full-fledged
sketches as okay ten-second jokes — at Alley
Theatre in City Block, next to O'Malley's Corner
at what used to be Vinnie's (the venue retains
its open, nightclub-style seating, disco ball,
Soul Train dance floor, and funkified electronica
music booming over the sound system).
No individual writing credit is listed for any
sketch (the one you see above is what you get in
the program), so I will assume that the nine members
(plus one founding member currently in
absentia)
will share the credit and blame equally. The good
news is that I only denoted three or four real
clunkers in the lineup. The rest are divided in
my mind between the good and the so-so, but they're
all entertaining and amusing, and so utterly, liberatingly
insane that even die-hard fans of The Indicators
(a group which includes me) might not notice or
care that this particular assortment isn't quite
as clever or raucous as some of their earlier offerings.
This is a departure for The Indicators, only the
second time they have put on an entire hour-and-a-half's
worth of plays that they have taken the time to
write out, and therein may lie the problem: they're
better actors than writers, and the element of
unpredictability and anarchy that makes their improv
shows so special is too often missing here.
The vast majority of the sketches are redeemed
by occasional moments of true insight (as in bit
#7, "Ms. McGillicuddy's School", in
which the troupe satirizes society's view of panhandlers
in a way that is utterly true, unfortunately),
and of course, the usual Rogue's Gallery of quirky
and surprising characters that reside somewhere
in the dusty attics of the cast's collective and
disturbed minds. They include Lindsey Carter as
a hip-hop radio host with a secret identity; James
Cronin and Alaine Livingston as a married couple
so dysfunctional that they don't even notice the
suspicious connection between the items their neighbor
(Carter again) keeps borrowing; James Isaacs, who
reminds me a lot of Matt LeBlanc, as several characters
of varying degrees of intelligence, including a
sheltered twelve-year-old with Tourette's Syndrome;
Ben Owens as a tobacco ad man with a novel approach
to his slogans; and Brandon Meeks doing triple-duty
as a substitute teacher who's a real Nazi (and
not in the hyperbolic sense), the pilot of the
Hindenburg, and Tom Cruise (in a fairly close-to-the-mark
impression).
My favorite sketches were "Master P's Theatre" (get
it?), featuring Robert Greene, the only black Indicator,
as the titular rap star narrating a hip-hop "remix" of
Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, and "Man O'Pause",
featuring Isaacs as a husband with a cruel habit
of taking a long mid-sentence pause at exactly
the point in each sentence which is most horrifying
to his long-suffering wife. I also liked the whole-ensemble
bits that bookend the evening; the opener, "Candy
Coalition", is like a far-out Stanislavskian
theatre game, whereby the nine players assume the "personalities" of
ten leading candy varieties, and the closer, "Puppet
Protest", finds Meeks playing a most unlikely
rabble-rouser.
Occasionally along the way, a cliché or
two is turned on its empty head. For example, we've
all seen the underage punk trying to buy beer with
a fake ID, but how many of us have actually seen
a guy in the same liquor store, say about mid-twenties
or early thirties, also using a fake ID in an equally
pathetic attempt to get the senior citizens' discount?
Actually, I have, but never onstage before, and
never as amusingly as in this case. This vignette
could actually go on a bit longer, and be developed
a bit more.
The set is only a few chairs and a table, costumes
are the actors' street clothes, and there is not
much lighting or sound except for blackouts and
bursts of music during transitions and a few well-placed
strobe effects, but the designers, Corey Music
and Knuckles, do a good job of keeping on top of
those elements from the pit just offstage.
On the whole, I had a pretty good time leaving
my discriminating tastes at the door and enjoying
a good sophomoric laugh at ASAP, and the
undersized audience, most of them rather older
than the traditional fan base of this sort of thing,
seemed to agree with me. Keep your eyes on The
Indicators, partly because they are growing in
their popularity, and partly because, well, you
never know what they'll do next.
The Indicators present ASAP: Coming Soon, an Evening
of Sketch Comedy
The Alley Theatre at City Block
133 W. Liberty Street
Louisville KY 40202
(502) 589-3866
www.cityblocklouisville.com
September 5-6, 13-14, 2008
Tickets: $12 General Admission, $10 Student.
Starring:
Lindsey Carter, Erin Crites (in absentia), James
Cronin, Matt Gifford, Robert Greene, James Isaac,
Candace Lawrence, Alaine Livingston, Brandon Meeks,
Ben Owens
Updated Sept. 11, 2008
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