Weapons of Mass Distraction

Weapons of Mass Distraction. 9:00pm Thursday, August 17, 24. Rabbittown Theatre at the corner of Merrymeeting Rd. & Linscott St. / 709 739 8220. $5.

Improv is risky business for an actor. Take Colin Mochrie. Whose Line is it Anyway?- good. CBC’s Carol Burnett Show spoof - bad. Improv comedy troupe, The Weapons of Mass Distraction’s show is a series of improvisational theatre games. Here’s the deal. Suggestions for settings, situations, famous people or whatnot are solicited from the audience. The boys then improvise a scene based on a set different rules or constraints for each game. Hilarity ensures. No, really, it does. Marc Nicolson has a voicebox full of accents. You’ll need a baseball glove to catch all Tim Ronan’s lines. Pat Demsey should be wearing a helmet and Andrew Halliday is a rubberface (in a good way). Ronan also acts as host and central scrutinizer for crowd suggestions. The only thing I’d like to see them try is something that Calgary improv pioneers Loose Moose Theatre do; there, the audience is given sponge Boo Bricks that be can chucked on stage to stop the scene and put everyone out of their misery if the sketch happens to take the offramp to Suck. Of the nine games last Thursday I would have only tossed one, but it would have landed in St. Lawrence.

(Submitted Photo of Pat Dempsey and Tim Ronan of Weapons of Mass Distraction.)

Published in The Current on August 17, 2006.