The Buttered Niblets' improv comedy show featuring Princeton's Quipfire was certainly the on-campus event to be at last weekend. On Saturday night Arellano Theatre was packed for the Niblets' first show of 2007 and their "two improv groups for the price of none" performance certainly did not disappoint.
Audience members not only enjoyed seeing new and classic games from the Niblets but also from their New Jersey guests.
Quipfire went first, getting off to a slightly uneasy start with "Excuse Me," in which the improvisers had to react to a buzzer and quickly come up with and act out new words whenever it rang. It was mildly entertaining but probably the least funny of all their games.
They recovered, though, in "Rewind, Replay." In this game three of the Quipfire players repeated a nearly identical dialogue scene after scene, but with vastly different settings, such as ER, Theatre of the Absurd, The OC, Citizen Kane and anime. The players even whipped out some impressively obscure references from literature to pop culture and beyond.
One of Quipfire's strongest games, of which the Niblets did a funnier and more difficult version later on, was called "Party Quirks." Based on the suggestions of audience members, three of the players improvised strange and mysterious "quirks" for their party-goers while a fourth tried to guess what they were.
The three guests were Britney Spears concealing that she wasn't wearing underwear, an easily offended effeminate man, and a radioactive guy from New Jersey. Even though it took a while for the guesser to figure out the second two, the suspense and over-the-top performances kept the game from feeling too lengthy.
With Princeton's improv group finishing the majority of their act early in the show, the Buttered Niblets took the stage.
They too began on a weak note with a routine called "Growing and Shrinking."
The game started with one person improvising a solo scene until more players entered one at a time, each time transforming the scene into something new. Once the game reached capacity, the players reversed their entrances, reverting to previous scenes.
Although it took skill to come up with on-the-spot ideas and memorize all of the prior scenes in order, the game could have been tighter and more specific, or could have kept the scenes somewhat related.
However, the four-minute-long "Challenge" game, in which members challenged the validities of each others' "first kiss" stories, was absolutely hilarious, and the "Murder Mystery" game was even more so. A vast improvement on Princeton's "Party Quirks" game, one person had to guess the culprit, weapon, location, accomplice and motive for a murder. It sounded easy enough, but apparently the victim was George Clooney, the weapon poisoned cereal, the place a nuclear power plant, and the accomplice a shaman. Oh, and he did it because Mr. Clooney had "fruity hair." And another thing: they couldn't talk.
They players could use only actions, neanderthal-like grunts and other sounds. When the guesser thought the accomplice was James Brown (not too far off), the crowd was thrown and laughing hysterically, attempting to peel itself off the floor.
The Niblets decided to follow up the success of "Murder Mystery" with a game meant to keep the audience from laughing. Unfortunately, it worked a little too well.
While this game has been popular in the past, the Niblets failed to pull it off because in reality their aim, despite the game's title, is to make the audience laugh. Even with two couples of guys linking their arms, standing back to back, and having to swing the other one around when the crowd so much as chuckled, the theatre was a little too quiet during the scene.
Quipfire then came back on for a game involving the whole group -- an exciting premise that didn't last. Using the last line of one scene for the first line of the next was fun for a while, but even with references to Godot and elephant shoes (from earlier in the show) it lasted a little too long.
In the end the Niblets outshined Quipfire, as one would have hoped. The "home team" finished strong with the narration of a showering competition, a game called "Space, Time Continuum" and an improvement on a classic routine, "Superhero Funeral," which happened to involve Asparagus Man this time around.
One of the show's biggest letdowns was the lack of collaboration between the two groups. The one game they did play together, however, turned out to be a crowd favorite called "World's Worst." Drawing on a few members from each group, the players acted out (among other things) the world's worst emo band, book title, fashion model, wingman, frat party, paramedic and dog-walker.
However, this game was probably the least collaborative one they could have chosen; there was no interaction between the members of either group because it was a very individually improvised game. It would have been entertaining to see the fairly apparent chemistry between the two groups play out in other, more integrated games.
Maybe it's asking too much for Hopkins and Princeton to put aside their lacrosse rivalry even on a night of comedy (or for two groups who have never met before to coordinate a more elaborate improv game), but it would have been nice.
Besides the few games that could have been shortened or altogether cut, and the lack of collaboration between the Niblets and Quipfire, the night was wonderfully replete with on-the-spot comedy that left all in attendance waiting in anticipation for their upcoming February show.
