Before even passing through the doors of the Arellano theater last Friday night, Throat Culture set the scene for their traditionally ludicrous act.
As I paid the recession-friendly "discount price" 99-cent entrance fee, I handed the girls at the door a dollar, telling them not to bother with the change. However, they insisted upon the importance of this penny. I was told to take my penny and throw it into the "Fountain of Yip" for good luck. I did so to the musical musings of bubbles, blown earnestly through a bright straw by the man the fountain honored, sophomore Andrew Yip.
The introduction to their 13th sketch production was a mixture of Throat Culture's resourcefulness, postmodern comedic style and heavy handed acting, showcasing some of the best and worst elements of the group.
The audience was introduced to the sexual tension, which always promises to take a prominent place in Throat Culture's shows, in the group's welcome headed by senior Bill Fuller and freshman Maxi Grumpecht. The pair put on an amusing rendition of what at first appeared to be an archetypal story of unrequited love. However, it was soon made clear that this was a story about the psychology of the stalker.
Their bickering, as Bill's advances were continuously rejected by Maxi, implemented both the sketch comedy group's penchant for ridiculous situations and their tendency to assume a Broadway-style stage presence that comes across as over-acting in the relatively intimate 200-person setting.
Although TC supposedly was looking for shout-outs from the crowd, it soon became clear that those selected were TC members planted by "Bill" to further his cause with Maxi. The theme propagated, "love," as in "love-making," as in between Bill and Maxi, exposed these plants, and possibly the voyeuristic tendencies of some of TC's cast to both the crowd and Maxi.
After a ridiculous phone call in which we overhear Maxi's "boyfriend," freshman Mike Zaccardo, inform her from backstage that he is flying to North Korea and has to break up with her because of this. He finally urges her to partake in great sexual relations with Bill, and the initial bit closes as Maxi drags the unrepentant Mike out from the back and storms off stage.
Bill then announces his humorously random pre-show "Things to Remember," spewing seemingly nonsensical warnings about the first two rows being the splash zone and GHB being the name for the roofie pill, and extending a conditional invitation to the audience to join TC for refreshments afterwards - ladies only.
As audience members in the front rows discovered later, the precaution about the splash zone was actually more realistic than expected, as the byproducts of many water balloon fights found them in their vulnerable spots up front.
Throughout the show, several themes and motifs beyond the initial one of love became evident. Throat Culture satirized and played with ideas of homosexuality, the impressionability of children, American stereotypes about immigrants, advertisements - key to the night's theme of Discount Sketch Comedy - and bears.
As the incorporation of bears throughout the show proved, clearly Throat Culture has the ability to take almost anything and throw together an ingenious act featuring it.
Their third and fourth sketches highlighted this talent as well as TC's fondness for using crude language and expletives to appeal to students' college-conditioned humor. For example, when the bear antagonist typifies Goldilocks as a "stupid broad" because she does not understand that the porridge was meant not for sustenance but to entice humans. The vulgarity was also evident in the next bit, in which the bear's dialogue contained many colorful words.
In the two following skits, Throat Culture employed circular logic to mock the cheap gimmicks upon which much of the show was based - lowering the lights and seducing the audience with a deep offstage voice to set the right hypnotic tone. The group's use of meta-humor drove home their criticism of such ploys as they broke the fourth wall, hurling carrots at the audience and acknowledging the ridiculousness of their own act, playing after the sketch with the poor phone service, plaintive break up music.
Throat Culture's following series of sketches featured Russian balloon con-artists masked as balloon salesmen, broken up by snippets of James and the Giant Peach, advertisements, advertisements, advertisements, child trafficking via car salesmen fathers and gangs run by 10-year-olds. In these bits, TC adopted heavy accents - Russian with occasional Italian mobster - slapstick humor and dramatic irony (the true nature of the Russians' business was clearly unknown by the polite, community-serving boys, to great effect from the crowd).
The delivery of these sketches sometimes left the audience dangling, however, as TC members were unable either to deliver a punchline deserving of the rest of the skit or to convey their jokes effectively. In the bit about the delusions and failings of the gang of 10-year-olds, the cop's closing "Oh, you boys" does not carry the poignancy this group of children-turned-murderers merited.
Later, when the Russians devolve from cool criminals to accidental murderers crying amidst the wreckage of balloons, the actors became so caught up in the melodrama that was occurring on stage that they closed off the crowd.
Regardless of these criticisms, this show was, according to this reviewer and the uproarious reactions throughout the hour-and-a-half long show, the best by far this school year.
