Batterymouth
www.batterymouth.com

Performs Improv
At
Apollo Theater Studio
www.apollochicago.com
2540 N. Lincoln Avenue
Chicago, Illinois 60614
773.935.6100

Featuring: Dave Urlakis, Mark Walkley, Zack Whittington,
Jamie Buell, Eric Rampson, Melissa Morgan, Heather Svoboda

Press Contact: David Rosenberg

January 21 to February 25, 2009

Susan Weinrebe
January 21, 2009

In the cozy cabaret setting of the Apollo Theater Studio, two improvisation groups were on the slate to create whatever mayhem and fun their agile minds could come up with on the spur of the moment.

Using the first suggestion flung out by the audience, the idea was to grab it and run willy nilly in the direction quick-thinking took them.

The Fling, denizens of another improv theater, The Playground, started cooking with the yelled idea, “Comfort food!” That was immediately refined into “meatloaf” and the four players, Jamie Buell, Melissa Morgan, Eric Rampson, and Heather Svoboda, were off and running. The glue that bound their skit together was the premise that two college-age daughters were home for a visit and, of course, seeking some good home cooking. Why it’s almost always a guaranteed hoot to have a male play a woman is grist for another time, but, suffice it to say, mother in this improv was played by one of the men. The gender switch truly emphasized the humor of some of the sexual stereotypes in the household.

Satire coming from the girls, shocked at their empty-nest parents finding lives for themselves, drew rolling laughs from the audience, which no doubt saw themselves as the kids, the parents, or both! The Fling’s short performance was funny and tantalizing enough to leave me wanting more.
When Batterymouth, the ensemble of Dave Uriakis, Mark Walkley, and Zack Whittington, came on, they had a hard act to follow. While they, too, followed the format of taking the first suggestion yelled from the audience, in this case, “singing telegram,” they chose to improvise a series of loosely bound together vignettes, rather than one cohesive skit.

Anyone familiar with the Firesign Theater will think they recognize the style. A thread of reference binds interludes of improv together in a vaguely surreal, stream-of-consciousness way. The unifying thread here was a young man who yearned to do something he was unsuited to pursue. In one case, it was to be a dancer, even though he had a limp. In another episode, he wanted to be a flautist, though his lip wasn’t well suited.

Humor often comes from transposing an idea. In this situation, the young man’s parents discovered his tickets to a symphony and were shocked and outraged. His response: lie, lie, lie. In real life, the parallel would be if they had found pornography under their teen son’s bed.

Cabaret is fun! The audience is small, seating is under thirty, there’s an open bar, one sits close enough to the performers to reach out and touch them. One never knows what’s going to happen, because that’s the nature of the beast.

Apollo Theater Studio is featuring Batterymouth with different opening acts through February 25. Accessible prices make this an evening’s entertainment that is, well, entertaining.

Dave Urlakis, Zack Whittington, Mark Walkley
Courtesy of Zack Whittington

---

Dave Urlakis, Mark Walkley, Zack Whittington
Courtesy of Zack Whittington

---

David Rosenberg at Ticket Desk
Courtesy of Susan Weinrebe

---

Apollo Theater Studio
Courtesy of Susan Weinrebe

---

For more information, contact Dr. Roberta E. Zlokower at zlokower@bestweb.net