Preview
A NIGHT OF IMPROV
Colin Mochrie, Ryan Stiles, Greg Proops, Jeff Davis, Chip Esten and Brad Sherwood
Friday, June 11
Jubilee Auditorium
It’s a Friday afternoon and Colin Mochrie is in a car in rural Massachusetts on his way to a live gig with fellow performer Brad Sherwood. Mochrie is on the phone answering questions about an upcoming show in Calgary but he can’t resist continually ripping the other guy in the car. At various times in the conversation, the 46-year-old Canadian comic says of Sherwood, "I carry him on stage a bit." "I have never really got Brad. I don’t know why he’s on tour with us." "His fly is always open."
This wise-assed hazing of Sherwood is a backhanded reflection of Mochrie’s fondness for the guy. It’s the sort of thing Mochrie extends to most of the improvisers he regularly shares a stage with. When the predominantly bald, rubber-faced funnyman gets to Calgary on June 11, he will perform with five buddies he has a lot of history with.
"It really helps that we have all worked together for so long," Mochrie says. "There’s definitely a shorthand between us."
All the guys in the Night of Improv show will be familiar faces to regular watchers of television’s Whose Line Is It Anyway? That show has been a fixture in Mochrie’s life for a very long time. He appeared on the original British series for close to a decade and was on ABC’s American version from its inception in 1998 until last season. (Although not officially cancelled, ABC has not put the series on its 2004 programming schedule.)
The Whose Line yin to Mochrie’s yang has always been Ryan Stiles, the lanky comedian and Drew Carey Show co-star who Mochrie met in Vancouver about 30 years ago. Onstage, the chemistry and timing between the two is remarkable.
"Probably 95 per cent of the time I know where he is going in a scene," Mochrie says. "And the times I don’t know where he is going, I just trust it is all going to work out."
Besides Mochrie, Sherwood and Stiles, the Calgary show will also feature Greg Proops, Chip Esten and Jeff Davis. According to Mochrie, the bespectacled Proops is "the sarcastic edgy one. He takes no prisoners and suffers no fools." Esten, meanwhile, is "the eye candy and sort of the all-American boy. He is probably the most underrated of all of the performers."
And as for Jeff Davis, he’s "an edgy young cross between Warren Beatty and Chevy Chase," says Mochrie.
Besides a fine assortment of Whose Line games, audiences for the group’s current live tour are being treated to a risky little offering not shown on TV. "It’s a game called Mousetrap," says Mochrie. "We have a stage covered with live mouse traps and two improvisers who are barefoot and blindfolded as they do a scene." And what is the rationale behind that game? "There’s nothing funnier than pain," Mochrie quips.
TV audiences that have been feeling the pain of the recent absence of Whose Line Is It Anyway? will have a new show to tune into this fall. That’s when the WB network will debut Drew Carey’s Green Screen Show, a blend of live and animated improv with a familiar cast of former Whose Line stars. Torontonian Mochrie is grateful for the new series and also has fond memories of his two years as a regular on CBC’s This Hour Has 22 Minutes. But to him, nothing beats the thrill of performing live. "There will never be anything that can replace that," he says, "It’s something that I always want as a constant in my life." |
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