?On a weekend night at the Second City, the booze-soaked audience often comes up with lousy suggestions for improvisation. But on the first night of the Chicago Improv Festival, where the audience partially is made up of actors who know the pain of trying to salvage a funny scene from a scatological or sexual suggestion, the audience input is top-notch.
"Tell us your favorite place to hide," said one of the Second City performers at the Athenaeum Theatre on Thursday night, to the audience of several hundred fans of improvisation. A closet or cubbyhole was the expected suggestion. "Canada," was the quick-as-a- flash response -- and Second City was on a roll.
"Free health care," was the line as performers stared up at the sky. "You can smell it." Now in its fifth year, the once-scrappy Chicago Improv Festival is looking like a much classier operation, replete with sold-out shows, lifetime-achievement awards and national sponsors. This year's festival -- which features evenings with multiple performers - - has attracted an international list of performers, including Tokyo's Yellow Man Group, The Improv Bandits from Auckland, New Zealand, All Jane No Dick from Poland, and both Slap Happy and Colin Mochrie & His Canadian All-Stars from Toronto.
But since not much that's funny is coming out of Israel right now, there was particular interest Thursday night in Lo Roim Mimeter (which roughly translates as The Metric System, although that misses a Hebrew pun), a highly regarded and popular troupe from Tel Aviv. Even the Israeli Consul General in Chicago, who can't be getting many nights off these days, showed up at the Athenaeum to see them. If the three genial Israelis thought that religion or the Middle East conflict would be regarded as off-limits by a Chicago audience, they were wrong.
"For this next scene, give us a place you'd send your ex-lover," asked one of the Israeli guys. "Jerusalem," came the response. "Give us an era from history," they said. "The time of Jesus," , was the reply, as did Lo Roim Mimeter's tongue-in-cheek response: "We'll show you what really happened then."
Improv is difficult to start with. It's harder still in a foreign culture. And when you consider that Lo Roim Mimeter's performers were doing all this in a second language none of them has entirely mastered (a few translators were located around the house), the group's performance Thursday night was exceptional. Hebrew speakers might want to check them out Sunday, when they'll be doing a show in their native tongue.
When the language barrier won the moment at the English show on Thursday, greater fun was the result. Following the suggestion of "Get Off My Toe" as a first line of dialogue, Lo Roim Mimeter launched into an entire scene entirely based on the line "Get Off My Child." By Chicago standards, the Israeli diet of games was not improv in its most sophisticated form. But the three guys in Lo Roim Mimeter are masterful physical comedians with the most genial of collective personalities. Some of their material --notably a dark song about a child going to school with a gun and a weird scene called "the American Immigration Dance" -- reflected cultural realities. But like improvisers everywhere, these fine, honest and risk-taking performers mostly want to have fun with props and language and bring people together in universal laughter. In the current climate, they are a burst of fresh and funny air.? Chris Jones, Chicago Tribune April 6, 2002