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The Reader
Chicago, IL
Re: Playground Theater
Volume 28, Number 24
The Playground's Prime-time show is more of a mixed bag. But that's intentional. By presenting four troupes a night - each one given 30 minutes - the Playground co-op (made up of some dozen or so troupes) virtually guarantees that at least one group will be pretty good and at least one will really suck.
The night I caught the Playground the first team on the bill, Punch a Horse, wasn't even remotely entertaining, making every improv mistake in the book - denial, poor taste, pointless exposition. But Mission IMPROVable and Judo Intellectual offered the kind of intelligent, witty, well-structured work that would have made Del [Close] proud.
Jack Helbig
Theater Critic
The Reader
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UrbanSavvy
www.urbansavvy.com
UNDERgroUnd's Best: Urban Perfomers
We started a mission to provide supportive giggle and claps to a friend performing, a friend who got so trashed prior to the show, he couldn't perform! So…we ended up providing instead, supportive, ass-bouncing laughter to these 6 guys called Mission IMPROVable. OK, yeah, at first glance they look like a whole set of wannabe Brady Boys. However, when to the beat of a notsobad spit 'n' blow fake beat-track one shouted "Now do that in a rap!" in reply to an interesting rhyme to his fellow performer, I was hooked! I've seen some lame improv in my day and was like I said on a mission of support (OK and frolic, too), but the M.I. boyz proved to be worth the 5 bucks to get in. Plus, I dig it when intellectual smartasses are made to look like donkey breath and all 6 of these funnybrains are exceptional when it comes to that!
Urban Savvy
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The Orlando Sentinal
Orlando, Florida
Re: Fringe Festival
Your Mission: A Fringe Binge for Laughs
Mission IMPROVable delivers rapid-fire funnies with improvisational zing. Humor and songs liven other shows. On the spot. Members of Mission IMPROVable make the most of sophisticated silliness with their brand of improvisational humor.
The six guys from Chicago who make up Mission IMPROVable look hardly a day older than your average boy band - that is, they look about 12. But don't let their baby faces fool you. These guys are funny, and they have made a pretty shrewd science of making you laugh.
Their show at the Orlando International Fringe Festival piles layer upon layer of sophisticated silliness, and it comes at you so fast that you barely have a microsecond to catch your breathe.
Mission IMPROVable does improvisational comedy, of course, but they couch it in a witty framework of the old Mission: Impossible TV show, with code names and secret assignments and even an elaborate opening credit sequence that's a stitch.
Their improv games are complex and rapid-fire, and one-upping each other is part of the shtick. You should be forewarned that bringing audience members up to participate is part of the shtick, as well, and if you shun the limelight you should run the other way if someone tries to hand you an envelope as you walk in the door.
Better to sit back and watch as these guys keep two steps ahead of you - and stick around for the final coup de grace, a wierd little piece of theater that fits neatly into this year's Naked Fringe.
Elizabeth Maupin
Theater Critic
The Orlando Sentinal
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The Orlando Weekly
Orlando, Florida
Re: Fringe Festival
Be careful how you pronounce Mission IMPROVable. To lend it a hard "o" would be to erroneously imply that this six-member Chicago company in any way needs to improve on its powerhouse revue of rapid-fire improv comedy. What a difference a simple vowel can make.
The group's youthful, freshly-scrubbed faces are in endearing contrast to their mention their habit of performing under such code names as Cobra, Apache and Hurricane. Their hilarious "missions" are elaborations of time-tested party games like charades and telephone, made new again by expanded, self-punishing rules. Whether they're allowed to communicate only in gibberish or forced to repeat bits of business over and over again by whichever of their cruel comrades is momentarily in the director's chair, these eagerly inventive performers simply never stop working.
The frequent audience-participation routines are cheerful advertisements for solidarity and teamwork, not cruel feasts of humiliation. And after a mere few days in Orlando, the keenly observant Chicagoans are already able to pull off parodies of the Lymmo transportation system and other local landmarks with an insider' discernment. "Mission IMPROVable" is rapidly becoming a performers' favorite at Fringe Festival 2000; at the show I attended, nearly half the audience was made up of cast members from other productions and their friends in the local theater scene. That the potentially tough crowd responded with the fervor of fandom is the best recommendation I can make for this top-notch performance of spontaneous tomfoolery.
Steve Synder
Theater Critic
The Orlando Weekly
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Archikulture Digest
INK19: The Glass Bottom Boat of Cultural Press
Re: Fool's Fest - "The Trip"
SAK Theater, Orlando, FL
The longer the form, the more dangerous the Improv. Mission IMPROVable blew through that barrier and produced one of the most coherent improv segments I've seen.
Tonight we explore a Life Regret, "getting married" (or not). This Trip ran about a half hour where the cast never once dropped the ball, moving the thought forward, exploring it's side alleys, and always slipping back to center just when you though they were lost on the 418 toll way. From the idea of marriage and time, we looked at a running story of a 13 year-old who baby-sits children 3 years after the parents ran off, what sort of deal you can get on the baby trading floor, and a long chant about shit and what makes you scream it at the top of your lungs. And while this happens, a ball of unlimited time gets passed back and forth, and the concept of a lifetime commitment intertwines with the concept of the time you have and time you let slip away. It was cool. One of the players even admitted why he broke up with his girlfriend, which wrenched a pitiful "oooh" from all the women in the audience. The guys all nodded, but weren't sure why. When the marriage segment ran as far as they could take it, they played it backwards. Well, the words went forward, but they reversed the sequence. This sort of show could really mess you mind if you took drugs. Of course, that would be SO 1978.
With a bit of time left at the end, we ran one more game called "Challenge." Five if the IMPROVable lined up and talked about their early childhood embarrassment. At the slightest mistake in narrative, any of them could challenge the story teller and take over the narrative. Sure, sometimes they challenged grammatical errors or little slips in narrative, but you could challenge if you just thought you should be talking. It's just like having your own web site, but funny.
Carl Gauze
Archikulture Digest
INK19
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Twelveteen Magazine
An Online Publication from DAVE SCHWENSEN Entertainment
Re: First Annual Great Lakes Comedy Festival
Sandusky, Ohio
....The second [seminar] was hosted by the Chicago Improv troupe, Mission IMPROVable, who were also scheduled for a late show that evening. It didn't take long for the five-member group to have the seminar participants up and performing, while laughing at their new-found improvisational abilities.
Saturday's 8 p.m. show in the main theater brought in as many audience members as the evening before to see the zany stand-up of former "Saturday Night Live" cast member, Victoria Jackson. Opening was Cleveland's Pat Sullivan, who brought a North Coast outlook to the festivities just as he did for Drew Cary's HBO Special, "Human Cartoon."
Not long after walking out to loud applause, Jackson was demonstrating her trademark handstand poetry, ukulele songs and wacky thoughts about celebrities, her policeman husband and what the heck was going on in Sandusky, Ohio. Her performance ended with a question and answer session, followed by more laughs as she exited the stage with the Mission IMPROVable members.
Saturday's late show in the downstairs theater was Mission IMPROVable's high-energy, Chicago-style showcase. The group, who are all Second City graduates and perform regularly at the city's Comedy Olympics and in festivals throughout the country, presented short improvised skits, (called Missions), based on audience suggestions. It seemed as if no one wanted to leave, but as we approached the midnight hour it was time wrap up the event.
The success of The First Annual Great Lakes Comedy Festival means "The Second Annual" term is no longer only a dream for everyone involved. Meetings for next year's edition are already taking place, along with the search to bring new talent and established acts to the area. Plans include adding more days and shows to the festival as it continues to grow and to promote live comedy for what it is - laughter and enjoyment. Stay tuned and we hope to see you next year.
Dave Schwensen
Dave Schwensen Entertainment
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Improv Review
Chicago, IL
Mainstage: Anthaneum Theater
Don't Judge a Book by Its Cover
(Or a Troupe By Its Name)
Mission Improvable looks like the Backstreet Boys of improv, and in some ways the comparison goes deeper. Their manner is polished, and often their physical work is so good it appears choreographed. They're having a ball on stage while delivering some quality work. At the same time though, the content of their work more reflects the influence of Nietzsche and Kant than the Jackson 5 and the Bee Gees.
Their format opens with a monologue from each member, which gets cut off by succeeding actors who start their own monologues by riffing off the prior
speaker. The players then break off into a freeform series of scenes. This
evening, the scenes centered on the afterlife, eternity, and the identity and
personality of God. Heavy stuff, but remarkably humorous. One bit had the denizens of Purgatory on a camping trip, roasting marshmallows over the eternal flame, while theorizing about the infinite nature of time, and
how it stretched forever like taffy, in each direction. In another, God was
envisioned as a sort of 1950's TV Dad, calling down to his misbehaving children in the basement. In Mission Improvable's "Theo-verse," God has a wife as well.
The group, which is directed by Liz Allen, relies heavily on vocal sound play, and physical movement to inspire scenes and transition between them. At one point the troupe rapped out an intricate drumbeat, at others, they could be flying and rolling about the stage (this turned into a scene about ninja eggs). They take this physicality into their scene work as well, when one character started stammering, four of the others jumped up to create a thought bubble to reveal what he was really thinking. While providing another character's thoughts is nothing new, the speed and immediacy that this group reacted was worthy of marvel.
With a name like Mission Improvable, images immediately jump to images of shortform bar-prov. When they first appear on stage, you'll want to dismiss them as a bunch of young pretty boys. They turn those notions inside out, a very smart troupe, doing very smart work.
William McEnvoy
Improv Review
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Improv Review
Chicago, IL
Mainstage: Anthaneum Theater
The Boys Are Back
Sometimes called "the Backstreet Boys of Improv," Mission IMPROVable is a group of young, white boys that might be the thing that female and minority troupes think is wrong with the state of the improv community. That is if they didn't have to admit how good these guys are.
Performing a format of their own invention called The Trip, Mission took the audience on a freeform jaunt that borrowed from other formats, too numerous to mention, but they lent everything they did their own individual flair and displayed a tight group personality that was personable and edgy.
By allowing scenes to move and grow in their own time, the eight actors created scenes of substance, intelligence and, even while being greatly comic, tenderness. In one scene the group created a physical embodiment of love and then watched it morph as the couple to which the love belonged aged and their relationship grew.
Occasionally ideas were forced in and lines were stepped on, but when the troupe truly worked as a team the show really worked. They played a lot of games where the object was to simply mirror each other and, where a less talented troupe might lapse into the mundane, Mission IMPROVable kept their ideas focused and used a strong underlying improv philosophy to make something wonderful.
This troupe is equally adept at taking their cues from the audience and the environment as they are from each other. They're not afraid to take a risk or make a big offer, and they welcome the opportunity to break the fourth wall and address issues that are important to them, moment to moment. This critic hopes that Mission IMPROVable stays together long enough to outgrow their image.
Jeff Cantanese
Improv Review
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