The Chicago Improv Fest lineup is primo this year as usual, but even if I had time to catch every single set, I doubt anything could have slayed me dead quite the way Basssprov did last night at the Lakeshore Theater. Even if it hadn’t been a killer set—Bassprov’s Joe Bill and Mark Sutton were joined by stage ninja T.J. Jagodowski—the evening turned out to be a glowing love letter to, of all things, the Broadway musical.
Sutton and Bill’s patented formula—after taking a few audience suggestions, the comedians sit with fishing poles and create a stationary one-act play in which boat-bound redneck fishermen chew the fat—draws much of its humor from its characters’ obliviousness to their own moronic, cro-magnon bravado. But on hairpin turns, usually accidental eruptions of inspired poor man’s philosophy, they defy audience expectations and elevate the material out of simple bowery humor. (Although in the case of Sutton and Bill, the bowery is still great on its own merits.)
During last night’s set, in which the three characters were busy concocting a concept for a new gentlemen’s club (“It’s not a titty bar, it’s a breast lounge.”), somehow the dialogue turned to show tunes. Jagodowski, playing the biggest dunce of the three and seated in the middle, found it incomprehensible that he was sandwiched between two guys who enjoyed attending a nearby musical dinner theater. (“The prime rib alone is worth the price, but then they do a whole play for you.”) Jumping on the opportunity, Sutton and Bill more or less outed themselves; not as gay, but as straight guys with enormous working knowledge of musical theater.
In defense of Sondheim, Sutton—flannel-clad, rod in hand and shaded by the bill of his ball cap—sang Sweeney Todd’s ballad “Joanna.” Meanwhile Bill, to T.J.’s flabbergasted consternation, busted out “Hey There” from 1954’s The Pajama Game.
A testament to the texture and honesty of the two Bassprov mainstays, the “straight guys defending the passionate expression of musical theater” motif was mostly brilliant because it came from a deeply earnest place in both performers. Given their working knowledge of the eccentricities of Pippin and the career trajectory of Tim Rice, you got the feeling that Sutton and Bill could give the Monday night crowd at Sidetrack a run for its money.
Much like the closing scene in Steve and Jordan, Respectively—Steve Waltien and Jordan Klepper’s terrific new revue which just got extended at iO Cabaret through July—in which the boyfriends of the actresses playing the leads in Wicked try to rationalize their moribund “serious” stage careers, Bassprov demonstrates that a healthy lust for theater runs through the sketch and improv community.
Paul Sills, the late giant who had no interest in the walls that separated these two art forms, would surely be pleased.
