what: asssscat, an improv comedy show
where: upright citizen brigade's LA location
accompaniment: dustin
drinkability: fail. they serve soda and water and there are explicit signs for no byob. :(
show length: 90 minutes with a 10 minute intermission
out of four: two and a half/four
even though four in four boasts as chicago-based performance reviews, when i go out of town and have the chance to catch a show i'm gonna go for it. last year i caught an improv show at UCB east in new york, so i was stoked when my husband picked up tickets at the ucb la location for our trip out west.
ASSSSCAT is a 90-minute improv show established by 4 of the top comedians in improv and some very familiar faces that you'll recognize today. you can even catch one taped recording of the show on netflix, which i had previously seen going into this evening. the structure goes like this: there's a featured host each night, ours this evening was founder matt besser. they kick off the show with the host chatting with the audience, an off-the-cuff banter session that warms you up for laughs. besser did this in the most casual of ways, almost as if he was checking off an item on his to-do list for the evening. this is not a kickoff to get you hyped- its a kick off wherein you get to poke fun at fellow audience members, which of course can be fun in itself.
its uncertain if besser had a certain amount of time to fill with this task or if he simply gets to a point where it feels clear that its time to move on to the performance, but he called out the performers to come on stage, highlighting the monologist for the evening: joe mande. best known for starting look at this fucking hipster. there were a team of performers behind them, that evening including orange is the new black's lauren lapkus as well as sean conroy and joe wengert. the rest of the improvers i don't know by name (sorry, guys!) as they're constantly rotating and we were handed no programs and my memory hardly exists.
besser prompts the audience for a word or phrase and then hands the stage to mande who goes on a monologue based either entirely or quite loosely on the audience suggestion. mostly personal discussions, mande was righteously hit-and-miss all night with the audience, at once point taking his monologue on an incredibly too-long story that lasted easily over 5 minutes. as a mostly monotonous and audience eye-contact shy performer, it left the audience anxiously waiting to see the comedy after the bits.
luckily the team behind assscat are talented improvisers that quickly recovered and broke off into teams to improvise off of the stories that mande told while also keeping with the audience suggestion. as the show progressed it was awesome to see references to earlier sketches and stories referred to- an improv tool that makes the audience feel like they're experiencing an inside joke.
it's hard to judge an improv show by one night, so please take my rating as this particular evening, and nothing more. ASSSCAT is 100% worth seeing if you're in the LA-area, and who knows might show up for the evening? friday nights tickets are $10, sunday evenings they're free (!!). ongoing show- don't miss it.
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upcoming august shows:
friday august 29th, 8pm: oracle theatre's the jungle
TBD
join me, will you?