The Annoyance Theatre & Bar

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VeraWaitress

Joined 4 years ago

Tuesday Night - Hit or Miss -- That's Improv. You can get the pulse of an improv theatre by seeing their weekday long form shows featuring their "B" roster. On Tuesday night, The Annoyance is a big smorgasboard missing a few heat lamps.

On this Tuesday night, performers ranged from seasoned pros to newbies-- creating a night of uneven entertainment punctuated with bursts of utter theatrical brillance. Straight up, Annoyance is not at the level of the Improv Olympic or The Second City or UCB on their mid-week or long form nights, but hey, Annoyance has a bar...

The 8:00 and 9:30 shows featured two long form sets each, each set lasting about a half hour, where performers showed varied skill levels, including showing some lack of polish as performers: not facing the audience, voice projection problems, and maintaining a high energy.

The first show at 8PM featured two-person long form. (Hey, wait a minute. The website said it would be a four-person long form. This borders on bait and switch.) A two person long form like this is typically not done because it's high-risk. It requires the performers to be at a professional level in order to make up for the small cast. In this two-person long form set, there was plenty of denying, arguing, weirdo characters saying absurdly irrational things that are impossible to justify, along with uncomfortable negotiations, typical amateurish "gay" unwelcome advance scenes and standard "high status vs. low status" scenes like drill sargeant and simpy soldier which lacked originality.

Luckily, the second half hour featured a group of four seasoned performers whose efforts were more cohesive. (Hey, wait a minute,the Annoyance Theatre website said there'd be nine performers in this group... Hmm...) Although there were several uncomfortable scenes where the performers argued and struggled to find the focus of the scene, when they settled into a firm premise with a clear, fresh throughline with great information, the scenes took off. This group showed great agility in wrapping up the long form set and re-visiting the intial scenes for a socko ending.

The 9:30 show started with a large troupe of performers, and a few holes started to show. Fart jokes, vagina jokes, strange scenes where we didn't know who the characters were to each other, or where they were. Strangely irrational premises where people said nonsensical things like they were the "undead", with very little tying the scenes together. The audience just kinda sat there trying to figure out what was going on. No re-visiting of characters, no tying up loose ends...hmm.

The second half of the 9:30 show was touted to be a mix of seasoned pros and newbies. However, this second half turned out to be a level one student type show with embarrassingly ill equipped performers who had difficulty building basic scene components. One performer became overly physical in a fight scene. Wow. Pretty uncomfortable. Yikes.

Parking is tough. Because of a concert at the Aragon, I had to park 4 blocks away.

However, based on some of the good performers I saw on Tuesday at Annoyance, I bet their weekends are solid, and I can't wait to see the A list shows.