Even though the Thanksgiving holiday loomed right around the corner, “The Myspace Show” returned to the Upright Citizens Brigade Theatre in Hollywood on Wednesday night.
Starting at 9:30 p.m., the hour-long “Myspace Show” consists of an improv cast plucking a couple of random members from the audience who want their MySpace profile examined. That is then turned into a hilarious and long form of offbeat improvised comedy based on their profile combined with some stretching of the imagination.
Going into the show, I did not know if the cast would be on par with the “Human Giant” comedy team I saw at the last “MySpace Show” I attended. The backup “holiday crew,” consisting of Brian Huskey and three nobodies (albeit funny nobodies), definitely took a more random, bizarre angle.
The first guest brought up on stage was a young lady in her twenties named Robin, who is currently working on her teacher credentials. One interesting note is that she has abnormal tear ducts, meaning that she does not cry often. When viewing her profile, the audience laughed at the photo of her and her family dressed in sombreros on Olvera Street, a Christmas family tradition.
The cast took that and started off with an improv sketch of one of the comedians telling Huskey that he’s leaving as if they were former lovers. “Why don’t you cry?” he asked. Huskey replied that he can’t because he sold his tear ducts for a plane ticket so his partner could leave. “The process doesn’t feel complete, dammit,” his partner yelled as the audience roared in laughter.
It only got more bizarre as a reenactment of “It’s a Wonderful Life” took place on stage in which two Mexican angels (remember Olvera Street) tried to convince the other comedian not to jump off the bridge by explaining how the world would be if he never existed. This went on for a while and ended up with the comedian finding himself to be a racist. Oddly, this would be a recurring theme later in the show.
The second and last guest brought up on stage was the curly-haired fellow laughing hysterically in front of me. It was a guy whom I knew would be interesting: a music industry rep who said that 98 percent of today’s bands suck.
After viewing his “wolverine” and “penguin” photos, he mentioned that he dressed as a penguin to support his friends’ band at the Roxy last New Years Eve. He said the crowd was really cool, looking after him and “giving water to the penguin.”
After curious murmurs rose from the crowd about “Penguin Boy,” the cast started off with a side-splitting sketch about a band that wanted to kick out one of its members, a penguin. The band later sang a song about polar bears, a reference to a scene earlier in the show, when the comedian complained about being the penguin and decided to quit the band. After his departure, the other guys gave high-fives to one another and said, “Operation We-Don’t-Want-Him-In-The-Band-So-He’s-A-Penguin is complete!
Another hilarious scene was when two of the comedians were at a concert for The Police, but one of them felt it was his duty to look over the police horse (remember the penguin). “He needs water, man,” he cried.
With hilarious reenacted Sting-like voices coming from the two other comedians off-stage, the horse-lover missed the encores, but at least got to tend to the horse, which was already being “taken cared” of by Sting.
Out of the blue, the team fittingly went right back into the Mexican angels skit and, just like that, an incredibly random “MySpace Show” ended. But I’m now confident that no matter who is hosting the show, the cast will always deliver by bringing laughs to the point where your throat hurts.
