REGICIDE
Helen Gardiner Phelan Playhouse
See show info here
Rating: NNN
There’s lots of fresh new talent in Regicide, a smart sketch show directed by Second City veteran Kerry Griffin.
The lively opening ensemble number informs us that everything and everyone is fucked up, a theme explored in the next few sketches: one very funny one is about how two straight white men are finding it difficult to meet new pals as their 30-something friends get married a less successful one concerns a cop who’s being overly sensitive with a perp so the arrest isn’t caught and posted to YouTube.
Most of the troupe’s comedy comes from an authentic place. Every urban type who drinks alcohol can likely relate to the sketch in which a young woman arrives home drunk and can’t get out of her pants. A parody of a fashion runway featuring millennial slobs is right on target. And I liked the pacing and the increased stakes of a scene in which a seemingly happy couple sing to a crowd at their engagement party.
A handful of sketches are character-based, not plot-based, like one about a widowed farmer who’s getting a little too close to his animals. It’s cute but inconsequential. And one ambitious sequence about a man opening the door for a woman is beautifully choreographed, although I missed hearing the blackout line. (Some of the actors have projection issues.)
A bold sketch involves two female roommates and a lost IUD. It makes for a terrifically awkward situation, and the actors enliven the dialogue. A callback two scenes later pays off and says a lot about the gender divide. And in another solid sketch, a man tries to discover who he is by looking at his MEC purchasing history – a sketch that, like a lot of the scenes, is cleverly connected with the rest of the show.
Remember the names Emma Davey, Peter DeCourcy, Carson Gale, Gina Phillips, Sam Roulston, Christian Smith and Rosie Dempsey. I hope to see more of them onstage soon.
