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Details
• Now This! Kids! Reservations: (202) 364-8292 (or e-mail
bookus@nowthisimprov.com). Next performances: Feb. 20, March 20, 1:30 p.m.
• Blair Mansion Inn, 7711 Eastern Ave., Silver Spring,
Md., (301) 588-6646
• Parkway Deli & Restaurant, 8317 Grubb Rd., Silver
Spring, (301) 587-1427
• Mi Rancho, 8701 Ramsey Ave., Silver Spring, (301)
588-4872
• Savory Cafe, 7071 Carroll Ave., Takoma Park, Md., (301)
270-2233
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By Theodore
Fischer, Sidewalk
The show begins with a
pint-size explanation of what improvisational theater is all about.
"We can't do anything unless you tell us first,"
declares Carol Nissenson, the manager and one of the peppy performers in Now
This! Kids! – a totally improvisational musical-theater troupe
geared for children that, with a lot of help from the audience, creates
every melody, lyric, scene and lame pun right before your eyes.
The first thing an extremely helpful audience at a recent performance told
the group was to produce a rock song on the subject of cheese. The result:
"I love my cheese / My hunka hunka hunka hunka cheese." Then,
for the "Symphony of Emotions," the quick-witted and versatile
cast of four (two men and two women), along with a keyboard player, used
children's suggestions of happy, angry, stressed, hopeful, scared and shy
feelings to conduct themselves into a fugue state.
Audience members were summoned on stage – actually the floor of the
Blair Mansion Inn showroom, where murder-mystery dinner shows play
on weekend nights – to help the "world's greatest fairy-tale
teller" relate the "greatest fairy tale that was never
written." Somehow it evolved into "The Spoon That's in Love With
a Fork, " the convoluted saga of one Queen Elizabeth of Pokeyman.
Just before an ice-cream intermission, the cast adapted an interview with
the guest of honor at a birthday party – favorite food, favorite shows,
pets, siblings, etc. – into a rousing, original foot-stomping show
stopper followed by a hearty unimprovised round of "Happy Birthday to
You."
A request to settle an argument over whether kids get the blues (and, if
so, what about) elicited a blues song. For the Missing Piece Theater
segment, the audience supplied a word to motivate each player – sleepy,
smoky, gum – and a title, "Don't Drink." As a finale, the
assembly produced an original folk song honoring a courageous, albeit
totally fictitious, hero or heroine. A ditty about a girl named Janice who
commandeered a flying saucer to rescue a party of stranded mountain
climbers included the haunting refrain, "Oh, Janice, you took the
risk / You saved the people on a flying disk."
Public performances of Now This! Kids! take place on Saturday afternoons
at 1:30 at Blair Mansion Inn. This "big, dysfunctional family"
also brings shows to schools, parties and special events ($350 for a
four-performer, 30-minute show). A grown-ups' Now This!, whose musical
spoofs target everything from Shakespeare to the soaps, is also portable.
Blair Mansion Inn (left), located along the D.C.-Silver Spring frontier,
is something of an improvisation itself. The 1880s summer estate was
designed by Stanford White, who is perhaps best known as the architect
murdered in the roof garden of Madison Square Garden in Ragtime.
The mansion was an inn for families visiting World War II casualties at
nearby Walter Reed Army Medical Center before it went into show business,
and its decor quirkily mingles a piano that furnished the Woodrow Wilson White
House, a dining room with a map of Annapolis on its ceiling, several
1960s Golden Cup Awards from the Coffee Brewing Institute and cabinets
adorned with empty liqueur bottles.
Tickets to Now This! Kids! at Blair Mansion come in three sizes. You can
pay $18 a person for a buffet lunch and the show – but it would be
wrong. That's way too much for seriously soggy pizza and a grim answer to
the question, "What can you do to a hot dog?" There's a
$14-per-person birthday-party package with cake and ice cream if you have
something to celebrate, but the best idea is to pay $11 each for the show
and ice cream and improvise lunch elsewhere.
Fortunately, three places that are big hits with both adults and children
are located nearby, though not within walking distance. To the west, the
noisy and crowded Parkway Deli & Restaurant serves some of the
tastiest corned beef and potato pancakes this side of the Broadway. Due
north, in downtown Silver Spring, is Mi Rancho, a
cement-floor-and-beer-carton Tex-Mex joint where kids get to examine a
captivating tortilla-making machine. Takoma Park's self-service Savory
Cafe appeals to adults with hearty salads, pasta, sandwiches and
quiches and to kids with bite-size bagel dogs.
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