Catfight: Fresh Play for the Gender Card
Bad Dog Comedy Theater,
Every Wednesday
Running Time: 2 hrs
Is this really a good time to be launching a new improv comedy troupe in Austin? You could certainly make a case against it. Groups have been working the "instant comedy" territory here steadily for more than 15 years, and the current scene already fields a number of troupes, some with players boasting considerable improvisational chops. Plus, with Whose Line Is It Anyway serving up improv comedy on weekly network television, folks are now familiar with the form and with a sophisticated use of it. In short, audiences have seen it and seen it done well, making it tougher than ever for improv newcomers to create serious laughs out of audience suggestions and comedic inspiration.
That said, it's still possible for a new improv comedy troupe to get off the ground here and now -- if the group has something original to offer. Catfight, a novice band of improvisers directed by Marc Pruter and Tamara Beland, is off to a good start in this regard. It's an all-female combo, which by itself may not guarantee originality -- gal comics can rely on crotch humor as readily as guys, and some do -- but Catfight plays the gender card in a few ways that seem fresh. I mean, how many male improv troupes are likely to open their show with a choreographed dance routine?
Catfight's seven members vary as much in performing experience as in appearance, which is to say a good deal. But all project a sense that they belong onstage together and all -- even the least polished -- are on their way to developing onstage personalities that are distinctive and appealing. Leading the way in this is Marie Black, who introduces most of the troupe's routines. She is comfortable and confident out front, establishing an easy rapport with the crowd via her broad smile and quick-witted riffs off their suggestions. Right behind her is Veronica Legarreta, who, on the night I attended, took one of those hackneyed suggestions that all improv troupes suffer with -- "Vibrator!" -- and boldly delivered an inspired improvised dance on same in which the sexual aid was the size of a desk and she mimed pull-starting it and riding it like a mechanical bull.
At present, the women show the brightest flashes of originality when portraying characters. Patton Quinn is a mean Beat poet, spewing moody blank verse about Cinderella in between occasional spasms of interpretive dance. Casey Jacoby shines as a Bob Roberts-style folkie, all hippy-dippy earnestness in demeanor but with the politics of Jesse Helms. Since gas is, "like, way expensive, you know," she advocates drilling in the Arctic, singing "I see a white bear and I want to paint it black." As a radio talk-show host, Jacoby oozes laid-back sympathy for callers while deftly merging the audience's suggested topics -- baseball, flatulence, and nuclear power for single mothers -- into a catch-all discussion about the "resurgence of exploded children."
As the troupe is young, the improvisational skills on display are still a little rough. Performers have a tendency to rush through routines and try to grab the laugh rather than develop the scene. They aren't consistent at listening to each other or miming environments. And a majority of the bits end on a predictable note -- e.g., shouting the audience-suggested title to close an improvised clip from a movie -- instead of a spin on the set-up. But learning to use an improv structure as a launching point to explore character and relationships or make satirical commentary is hard and takes time. Catfight can grow into that. What it can't grow into, what any improv comedy troupe needs from the get-go, is a corps of performers who are appealing and talented, who can work together, and who share a sense of direction. That Catfight has. So it has the potential to fly, even here, even now.
