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Even for an event as hotly anticipated as the Immediate Gratification Players’s (IGP) Player of the Year event, starring Rachel Bloom, the SOCH penthouse is a pretty bleak environment to host a comedy event. Thankfully, not even dire, conference-style seating, and smatterings of rain could ruin a good show. The energy of IGP Players, a willing audience, and Rachel Bloom’s down-to-earth banter made the night buoyant and playful, just as improv should be.
Bloom, famous for her hit rom-com musical TV show “Crazy Ex-Girlfriend,” is perhaps less known for her work in improvisational comedy, despite having worked with the famous Upright Citizens Brigade Improv Theatre while at NYU. The show, then, was a rare opportunity to experience Bloom’s award-winning comedic imagination in an intimate, free-flowing setting. Whilst solo bits from Bloom — largely focussed around self-deprecating insights into Bloom’s life — did not disappoint, she seemed to truly come into her own during skits with the IGP players. A particular highlight was watching the easy repartee between Bloom and Elise B. Chenevey ’22, where, in a feminist theory class led by Bloom, Chenevey played the role of an irreverently Gen-Z student who, in lieu of a paper, had submitted a 120,000 word Aladdin fan-fiction, starring herself as Jasmine.
It is in moments like these that IGP really showed their comedy chops, even when sharing the stage with a celebrated artist such a Bloom. Indeed one of the greatest strengths of the show was that it felt in no way like a comedy masterclass — Bloom had an easy rapport with the Players, at some points even leading the entire group in a raucous Jewish tap dance session, but also stepping back to allow the players to take the limelight.
Some of the biggest laughs of the night came from the Players — Elliot J. Schiff ’21 demonstrated an effective command of comedic timing, including a clever bit as “Cool God,” who unexpectedly responds to the prayer of a fervent believer (Frank L. Garland ’20) with “this has never happened before!” Meanwhile, Chenevey and Hope S. Green ’20 expertly and wittily navigated the uncanny world of dating and beauty pageants for a woman with two mouths, in an unexpected tale of plastic surgery gone seriously wrong.
IGP’s strongest material were in skits like these which parodied contemporary life — while there was an ecstatic joy to surrealist escapes into a world where the genie from Aladdin “goes by ‘Gene’ now” and dragons were taking over Albuquerque, the hardest-hitting moments in the show came in the form of delirious one-liners, a format that current IGP Czar Frank Garland (“The Closer,” if you will) certainly has a knack for, repeatedly ending skits on a high.
By nature improv is, of course, a precarious art, and at times in search for structural cohesion, certain themes were perhaps overwrought — repeated references to “Chicago: The Musical,” for example, began to lose their impact in the last couple repetitions, and, while a skit where Chenevey gave birth to an entire live improv troupe was fascinating to see executed, it lacked a certain nuance which could have elevated it past novelty.
That said, while there were moments of nuance, ingenuity, and perhaps even poignancy in the show, these factors weren’t the driving force behind the exuberant madness which was the IGP Player of the Year Show. A combination of the seemingly limitless energy and charisma of the Players, a good-humoured Bloom, and an undeniably sporting audience meant that the show was a silly and joyous celebration of simply a group of funny people, letting their imaginations run riot, and not taking anything too seriously. Or in other words, on a rainy October evening, it was exactly what was needed.
—Staff Writer Lauren V. Marshall can be reached at lauren.marshall@thecrimson.com.
