THE CHRIS HOGAN SHOW
at Kill the Poets
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Watching Chris Hogan and John Lehr’s fully improvised hour-long show the other night, I was reminded of those wonderfully giddy afternoons–and not just because Hogan and Lehr, in the great tradition of buddy comedy teams, seem as natural together onstage as best pals. These two go about the business of improvising scenes with such joy and playfulness, and such unworried disregard for the established rules of improvisation, that they seem less like professional performers (though they’re both members of a group called Ed) than like kids having a blast pulling characters and dialogue out of thin air.
They may improvise a series of related scenes, as they did the second time I saw their show. Or they may simply create scene after unrelated scene, as they did the first time I saw them, spontaneously digressing from one topic to another with such dizzying speed that even if they weren’t funny (which didn’t happen often) they were still fascinating to watch.
Interspersed among these audience-participation bits are scripted sequences, also meant to demonstrate the power of virtual reality. The best of these was a scene performed outside (in ten-degree weather) in which four actors, one standing at each corner of an intersection, pretend to be a family sitting down to a Thanksgiving meal. “Pass the gravy!” one actor shouts, as another mimes handing the gravy boat across Division Street.
