3 SHIKSAS, A GOY AND 4 JEWBOYS
So I guess the honor goes to this group of Northwestern drama students, whose improv-comedy revue 3 Shiksas, a Goy and 4 Jewboys (a title that invites abuse, especially since one shiksa and three Jewboys were MIA for this performance) is currently playing in the densely packed quarters of the No Exit coffeehouse. Midway through the show, the two female IFs present, Karen Jensen and Kat Moynihan, balk onstage at playing a steamy scene with IF Greg Shore, requesting to play it with IF Dominic Hamilton-Little on the grounds that his English accent is sexier than Shore’s. In the middle of the subsequent scene, Shore bursts in speaking in John Cleese dialect and denounces his rival’s accent as bogus, whereupon Hamilton-Little, in pure Clevelandese, invites Shore to step outside and settle the matter. Through the window of the cafe we see the two having their altercation out on Glenwood, while the two women dither onstage over how they’ll finish the show. The effect is somewhat like listening to a conversation and watching television at the same time.
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Flaws, though, are inherent to improv. The genre is supposed to be evaluated by its potential, not its polish. And like their director, YIF seem to have grasped the theory of making comedy that’s intelligent as well as funny. In a sketch titled “The Kase Against the Letter C,” Jensen explores the ramifications of a single orthographical change–doesn’t the pope seem less intimidating as the leader of the “Katholik Shursh”? In a sketch inspired by a line offered by the audience, “I love Mona,” Hamilton-Little and Moynihan set up a lovers’ tryst in the Louvre after hours, and he even corrects her when she inadvertently mentions a work of art not in the museum’s collection.
