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Comedy Culture

The Wonder Pageant serves up hilarious seasonal spontaneity

THE WONDER PAGEANT by Kayla Lorette and Ron Pederson (Coal Mine, 1454 Danforth). Runs to December 23, Tuesday-Saturday 7:30 pm, Sunday 2 pm. $42.50. coalminetheatre.com. See listing. Rating: NNNN

If your annual holiday entertainment has fallen into a familiar groove should I see this Christmas Carol or that Nutcracker? head on over to the Danforth for something not on the mainstream menu.

Coal Mine Theatres The Wonder Pageant features half a dozen of the countrys best improvisers making (us) merry all on the fly.

Its less a long-form improv set than a variety show, something Anna Treuschs intentionally tacky festive set and costume designer Sim Suzers cheerfully ugly holiday sweaters signal immediately.

Granted, it takes a while for the show to get started a purposefully garbled version of Sleigh Bells is supposed to inform us that the actors havent rehearsed anything, but its more disorienting than anything.

Once the six performers and accompanist Waylen Miki, led by co-creators Ron Pederson and Kayla Lorette, hit their marks and the cast starts running with audience suggestions on opening night these included everything from skiing and skipping rope to the south of Spain and cocaine the show finds its rhythms.

Highlights included a terrific sequence featuring Pederson as a veterinarian and Jan Caruana as his assistant playing out a scene in different genres.

A musical medley featured performers starting out with charming ditties that soon went to inappropriate places.

And Kris Siddiquis bizarro appearance as Randy Newman popping by the show to sing a song about E-Z Bake Ovens (an audience suggestion) was as catchy as it was clever.

The show ended with a fractured fairy tale reading, which on the night I attended involved a childless couple and a slinky skunk (um, you had to be there).

But the showstopper was an extended scene inspired by a day in the life of an audience member, who turned out to be my theatre critic colleague Karen Fricker.

After Fricker was interviewed with the utmost graciousness by Caruana, the players launched into a whimsical, imaginative playlet in which Fricker (played by Paloma Nunez) wrote her copy, drank coffee, rode down to the ravines and met a certain veteran actor, then raced off to her other job as a professor at Brock University where she critiqued a production of 12 Angry Women.

Filled with cheerful spontaneity, wit and humility (I loved how Matt Baram learned where Brock was located), this bit illustrated the strength of ensemble improv.

Listening to each other suggesting ways to advance scenes (something Caruana is especially good at) learning from mistakes and making fun of them what better way to close out a stressful, polarizing year than by celebrating all of these things?

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