Open Court Drama

Last night at Open Court, an old teammate showed up to play. I wasn't very thrilled. He and I used to play on a team that had zero chemistry and broke up, partly, over him and the fact that he could never do a show sober. You know those old clips they play of Elvis having his Vegas meltdown? Imagine that, except every show, improv, and he was never all that famous to begin with. Welcome to my last Thursday night.

First, he walks in while Erin Pallesen, playing MC, introduces our intrepid audience to the idea of Open Court, where everyone who wants to plays on an insta-team, and announces, interrupting, that he would like to join the second group because he was just coming from another show. Erin took it in stride, he paid his money and we all hoped he would at least be a little less dramatic.

We divide the audience into two groups of about nine people apiece. We warm up. My old teammate cannot keep it together, even during a rather banal game of "Zip-Zap-Zop." He keeps interrupting to apologize for lacking focus, in the process... draining our group's focus... saying also how excited he is to see me and meet my wife, who I'm reasonably certain was my wife when last I saw him three years ago. But maybe not. I don't know. Deal with it, dude, my wife is HOT.

So, we name our group and do the "Toin Coss," which in an ordinary show would determine group order. Last night, purely perfunctory. The other group took the stage. My friend disappears for the next twenty minutes. Hilarity ensues. The other team finishes, and we're up. Our suggestion: alcove.

My friend immediately takes the stage, doing all three of the things he's good at: accents, ignoring his partners' input, and talking a lot without actually saying anything funny. He hits the suggestion over the head, hard, with, "I'm making this phone call in this ALCOVE." Don't forget to add a funny German accent when you picture this, because it makes the moment unforgettable.

So we get a few scenes away from this, thankfully, when in should wander my old teammate, this time in an Irish accent, calling himself, alternately, "Terry" and "Teddy" Kennedy. Now, I realize with certain accents these two names can sound alike, but he was enunciating and nobody on stage had any idea what the hell to do with his input because a) it had next to nothing to do with the scene, which was not crying for a walk on by ANY Kennedy, b) my friend's grasp of politics and particularly the complicated history of Ted Kennedy and his affair with fast cars and booze was shaky at best. So we watched him ruin another scene.

At the end of the show, he told me how excited he was to see me again, that he'd been in the hospital for four days beating back the flesh eating bacteria with powerful antibiotics, and that he was producing a Broadway show now. Certain things must be taken with a grain of salt. Those with hypertension should probably steer clear of my friend.

Everyone else was great, though. If you've never been to Open Court, come, Thursdays at the Playground. It's guaranteed to be entertaining, at the very, very least.