By Carolyn Hayes
As a form, sketch comedy pairs well with evolution and experimentation. While all it takes for a great sketch show is a plethora of laugh-along scenes, the addition of a unique structure or a finale that ties disparate worlds together with a bow can up the cleverness factor exponentially. And when it's done well - when an inspired idea meets inspired comedy - the result can be unparalleled.
On the other hand, when an outre idea becomes the filter through which an entire show is shoved, at least there are jokes to fall back on.
Go Comedy! Improv Theater's holiday sketch shows have become a sardonic seasonal tradition in their own right. This time, the company answers the annual challenge to top itself with "The Worst Noel," a sketch comedy/short play hybrid written by director Bryan Lark and an ensemble of Go veterans: Melissa Beckwith, Rj Cach, Joe Hingelberg, Pj Jacokes, Suzie Jacokes, and Travis Pelto. Opening on a nightmare-before-Christmas robbery that rocks one nuclear family, the show then rewinds 24 hours to better explain the madness.
The tale involves a magic-stripped Elf on the Shelf, a detained Santa Claus, a busy day of visiting and party hosting and caroling at midnight Mass, a nondenominational fundraising telethon playing continuously in the background, a missing plate, and an epic celebrity-chef dip recipe delicious enough to repair personal relationships and (fingers crossed!) reputation-eviscerating gaffes. All these elements and more vie for the viewer's attention, as short scenarios and recurring characters shuffle the main story along. The journey is winding, full of callbacks and payoffs, but the plot itself, and the forgettable main characters, don't justify the trade-offs made to return them to the foreground.
At the same time, the (holi)day-in-the-life constraint doesn't stop the show from zig-zagging indiscriminately into weird and unexpected territory. These marginal characters and scenes make for the production's most rewarding material, be it a well-balanced ensemble effort at choir practice or the extreme comedy and character work of a most unusual group in recovery. Yet once again, adherence to story requires that these misfits exist no more than two degrees from the core family, sapping some effectiveness from tremendous one-off characters by forcing them to serve lesser expository and filler functions.
The production designers do their best to pull off the concept, with slide projections (by Pj Jacokes) and lighting cues (by Michelle LeRoy) that escort the viewer through multiple times and places, with help from thematically guided sound design (by Lark and Pete Jacokes). Set designer Tommy LeRoy's ingenious touches are a treat, in concert with a few spectacular costumes and properties (co-designed by LeRoy and Lark), but the magic stops too soon; when the whole carousel of characters cycles through, too many are distinguished only by trinkets or cosmetic changes, requiring Herculean audience effort to keep up with the melee.
In all, "The Worst Noel" delivers the outlandish, subversive holiday comedy that's become the hallmark of a Go Comedy! Christmas, but for all the times the company has gambled with form and won, this isn't among the best. For all its hearty wisecracking one-liners, topical parody, and silly pun work, the production feels bloated with mildly funny bridging scenes and inspired concepts that, as of opening night, may work better on paper than in practice. However, it's possible that once the production finds its groove, and viewers creep closer to that overwhelming brand of seasonal insanity that cycles back to deadly calm, this ambitious sketch-story blend could find the ecstatic comic zenith of its amusingly alluring potential.
REVIEW:
'The Worst Noel'
Go Comedy! Improv Theater, 261 E. Nine Mile Rd., Ferndale. 8 p.m. Thursday-Saturday through Dec. 21. 85 minutes; no intermission. $15-20. 248-327-0575. http://www.gocomedy.net
