The Game Show Show
Playwright: James Anthony Zoccoli,
Anderson Lawfer
At: The British Stage Company at the
Mercury Theater, 3745 N. Southport Ave.
Tickets: 773-325-1700;
www.gameshowshow.com; $15
Open run
The Girl with the Drag Queen Tattoo
Playwright: The Cast
At: Salsation and Wig Bullies at
Gorilla Tango, 1919 N. Milwaukee Ave.
Tickets: www.gorillatango.com; $12
Runs through: Nov. 25
There's no similarity between The Game Show Show ... and Stuff, and The Girl with the Drag Queen Tattoo, except that both are quite amiable and run approximately an hour. Both shows are moderately amusing without hitting it out of the ball park; both are at venues allowing drinks; and both are a reasonable value.
Actually, The Game Show Show can be more than a reasonable value as it awards $50 or even $100 prizes. The show is the semi-improvised love child of off-Loop theater veterans Anderson Lawfer and James Anthony Zoccoli, who preside, respectively, as the genial MC and the on-stage announcer and crowd-rouser. It combines familiar elements of TV game shows from Let's Make a Deal to Jeopardy, with audience volunteers facing off in a half-dozen games and challenges, including a tastefully named Jell-O challenge. There's even a challenge that raises money for a worthy cause, the Lakeview Pantry.
It's all good, clean fun except for the Jell-O. Indeed, the scarcity of four-letter words seems unusual for a late-night amusement. Lawfer and Zoccoli have been doing The Game Show Show in various venues for five years, so they are past masters of audience probabilities who keep things relaxed, fast, loose and funny. Crucially, they have fun with contestants but never disrespect them. Shows are Fridays and Saturdays at 11 p.m.
The Girl with the Drag Queen Tattoo unites Latino sketch-comedy troupe Salsation Theatre Company with the new LGBT sketchers Wig Bullies Productions. Despite a panoply of four-letter words, the 6 p.m. performance I attended drew about two dozen adolescents in a group. The 50-minute show offers about a dozen scenes on LGBT themes on the bare-bones Gorilla Tango stage. The opening and closing scenes are connected, but the show isn't a Harold ( for those who know improv terminology ) and instead offers random scenes in hit-or-miss fashion.
Scenes that hit are those about a drag queen who suffers from PMS, a knock at Southwest "no-sex" Airlines, a sketch about Catholic Latino parents who want their gay son to marry his partner of five years ( "It's time you made an honest man of him." ) and a sweet look at the early years of a 90-year-old fag hag. The biggest problem with The Girl with the Drag Queen Tattoo ( the title sketch is the show's final scene ) is inconsistent performance energy. The affable cast looked and sounded as if they hadn't performed in a week ( they hadn't ) and were warming up before the paying customers. Shows are Fridays at 8 p.m. through November.