FRINGE 2019: Gordon’s Cream of Improv
Gordon’s Big Bald Head: Usurpermen!
Stage 12 (Varscona Theatre)
For this year’s episode of the long-running Fringe hit Gordon’s Big Bald Head, a trio of master improvisers stride on stage.
“Greetings, people of Earth!” they intone. Apparent they are “strange visitors from another planet.” Anyone who has witnessed the supernatural abilities of the three to crawl into each other’s heads can be forgiven for thinking there are otherworldly forces at work here. The most common audience comment is probably, “It’s got to be scripted – right?”
Wrong. Over the years the make-up of the company has changed but this year’s participants are founding members Jacob Banigan, Mark Meer and Ron Pederson, each of them since having accomplished great things in the world of theatre, TV, and video games. Now all they need are three chairs, and an audience with an unlimited imagination and willingness to follow them down their crooked, cracked path into chaos.
This is the way it rolls out this year. The trio locate an unknown “alien overlord” in the audience – in the case of the show I saw, a young woman, apparently surprised that her cover has been blown, whose Earth name is “Isabella.” She is asked to pick a Fringe show from the program at random. At 258 shows this year, the choice is indeed random. The production chosen was Check Me Out – which has an impenetrable plot and a plethora of characters. You wish the three improv gods good luck with this one but the company proceeds to create filigrees of funny, kaleidoscopes of comic and mountains of mirth for the next hour. The results are amazing.
The evening contains breezy topical references, pop culture and amazingly improvised witty lines – some of which go by so fast you can barely catch them. The plot here was something of a horror story of murder and dismemberment in a Camrose grocery store, and there is no way it can be explained in this space.
The Gordon’s pursue their patented multi-pronged stories, often juxtaposing incompatible genres, just to see what happens. They negotiate absurd turns in the narrative with a masterful ease and without any sign of that deadly enemy of great improv – the dreaded pause.
Then, at the end, the audience who’s been laughing solidly all evening, rise (as they always do) and delivers a standing ovation.
5 out of 5
