Victory Is Theirs!

 

Milwaukee sketch comedy isn’t as competitive as it could be. But I’m pretty sure Broadminded Comedy would rise to the top of any such competition, after catching Broadminded’s latest show, Participation Prize: Win, Lose or Just Show Up. Except for a few rough patches in the first half, the troupe’s four comedians brought their A-game to the Underground Collaborative’s new Arcade Theatre in the Grand Avenue.

Broadminded’s Anne Graff LaDisa, Stacy Babl, Melissa Kingston and Megan McGee entered the ring. Games and competitions were the theme of the hour, but all the battling was for show – after almost six years of performing together, Broadminded has chemistry on stage that was pleasant to watch.

In that first half, a sketch mocking priority boarding stayed non-ridiculous much too long; in a ponderous “Reality TV Shakedown,” Kingston’s motives for trying to spoil an episode of Survivor were too nebulous to work. Another missed opportunity was an election-themed sketch marred by technical problems and timing issues marred. That bit could have been great, as McGee, as Russell Brand, donned facial hair ingeniously made of tape and Sharpie. “Brand” moderated an iPod debate between Romney and Obama — Kingston and Graff LaDisa, wearing the scariest masks I’ve ever seen.

Several Act 1 sketches – probably a good two-thirds of them – went well. My favorite, “Lost and Found,” featured McGee as a lost sweater cast into a dark, Toy Story-esque world of left shoes missing their mate (Graff LaDisa) and mob-boss mittens (Kingston). By the time Babl showed up as a lunchbox/information broker I was dying, and the sketch’s pitch-perfect climax pushed me over the edge.

Then came the stacked second act. I don’t know where to begin. Applaud the satirical brilliance of a cartoon competition between duos G.I. Joe/She-Ra and Dora/SpongeBob that mocks the infantilizing safety-first mentality of modern children’s programming? Or cheer the cutting blows dealt to the newest American “holiday” in “Fantasy Black Friday”? Or praise the Broads’ acting chops, now on much fuller display in better sketches? For the record, Graff LaDisa’s koala impression in a Thanksgiving-themed bit might have been the highlight of my evening, especially when she went for the Crisco. The Broads offered too many goodies in Act 2 to detail here, but in short: If the first act was a tie game, the second is a blowout.

It’s worth exploring their very last sketch, as it’s an excellent measure of exactly why their sketch comedy clicks so well. “I’m a Loser” is barely even a sketch, nothing more than four women sitting in chairs and telling stories — true ones, if their asides are any indication — about times they felt like losers.

It wasn’t their “best” sketch of the evening – mistimed cues of the Beck song of the same name threw them off a bit, and other sketches were objectively funnier. But my favorite Broadminded sketches are like this one: true-to-life humor, unvarnished, sans pretension. When they stick to that formula, “losers” win.

Participation Prize: Win, Lose or Just Show Up will be performed again tonight (Nov. 24) and twice next weekend (Nov. 30/Dec. 1), all shows at 7:30 p.m. at the Underground Collaborative’s Arcade Theatre in the basement of Grand Avenue Mall, 161 W. Wisconsin Ave. Tickets are $10 and can be purchased online.

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