Legends of Improv Colin Mochrie and Brad Sherwood at Just for Laughs
These improvising superstars are older, better, but definitely not wiser.
Why would you ever think that laying out live 100 mousetraps, blindfolding yourself, removing your sock and shoes, and THEN playing the alphabet game (every time Colin or Brad starts to speak they start with the next letter of the alphabet) would be a good idea? The game was the most cringe-worthy ten minutes of the duo’s Just for Laughs show, their authentic yelps of pain and expressions of “Why are we doing this to ourselves???” (yes, their thoughts have three question marks, such is their incredulity) heart-wrenching in an “I-can’t-look-away” comedic way.
But these two guys are amazing.They haven’t slouched since their Whose Line is it Anyway days. They even rolled with an audience comment about the over-sized slippers they wore after the mousetrap game being Ryan Stiles’. These guys can stand on their own. They had the audience in the palm of their hands. Colin still can’t rap for shit, but that’s why he’s amazing – he keeps trying, and you’re sitting on the edge of your seat wondering what he’ll say next – the downbeats/verbal deadlines coming closer and closer. The controlled panic and the few rhyming moments of brilliance playing off each other.ose Line Series coming this year with Aisha Tyler hosting
What’s their best game? The night I went they played an amazing “Fill In”, with a line of audience members having to fill in the blanks when they raised their hands in a treasure-hunting scene involving Mesopotamians, goats, forks and cheaply produced Chinese goods. “Sound Effects” was amazing when the audience participants started speaking and Colin and Brad rolled with it. They don’t even look pissed off when the audience messed with the scene with sounds nothing like what they were clearly aiming for, because that’s the whole point. Like when an audience member whose turn it is to make the sound of a lawn mower can only hold his breath for 4 seconds, you end up with a fading lawnmower. Same goes for a drill, an air-raid siren, or any other large mechanical object in a scene conveniently about cleaning out a front lawn. Sure, Brad and Colin know what sounds are going to be hilarious and they do a good scene set-up (they’re going to find a lawnmower somewhere in their scene), but guiding it all along without the audience knowing and still making them die with laughter – that’s an art.
The thing that blows me away, though, is how they move a scene along: “Look! An inscription!” or while they’re moving through mousetraps, a Sherlock and Holmes mystery. Although I can pretty much promise that no one in the audience could tell you what the mystery was, so wrapped up in holding their breath when one of them was about to step on a trap.
If you ever have a chance to see these guys, do. They’re masters. Comedians that don’t even go the profanity and drug-heavy comedy route (compared with Moshe Kasher who I saw later that evening. He was great, but some of the older people in the audience seemed a little put off by his prolific use of the word “pussy.” They probably should have watched him on Youtube first. The locals did, however, perk up at the Hasidic Jewish jokes).
Colin and Brad are fun for almost the whole family, a couple of ass jokes aside. They’re for Whose Line fans and improv novitiates alike. They’re for audiences who like to participate and audience members who like to watch other audience members on stage and sit smugly knowing that’s not them.
Did you know the old Whose Line is it Anyway that these guys are known for would shoot over multiple days and they’d take just the best games for the show? That makes for a lot of less funny skits that just didn’t make the cut. When you do a live show like Colin and Brad did at Just for Laughs you have to be on the whole time.
Seek them out live, and watch them on the new version of Whose Line launched this summer on the CW.
Full article here: http://www.midnightpoutine.ca//2013/07/review_legends_of_improv_colin_mochrie_and_brad_sherwood_at_just_for_laughs/