Live comedy show "Random Acts" never gets old
By Becky Castle

"If you don't like the show, it's your fault!"

How often do you hear that at the opening of a performance? However, it's entirely true at Wonderama's new improv show called "Random Acts," where audience participation is the name of the game.

The show, which runs weekend nights at 10 p.m., stars several guys from Union High School and their former drama teacher, Troy Powell, an ORU alum, who keeps the action going. They rotate through their cast of actors, using four per week to keep the show fresh.

The stage is a blank slate, presenting only two tables (covered with hats and wigs) and five chairs. The elaborate humor these young men create with only a few props and suggestions from the audience turns the simple set into an opera of hilarity. They play round after round of improvisational games in which they take a set of rules and add lines from the audience to create hysterical scenarios. Think "Whose Line Is It, Anyway?" but much, much cleaner.

On the night I saw the show, the first game entailed placing two actors in a scary location and employing two audience members to move them around the stage at will. This time, the audience came up with a haunted house, and one of the girls pulled onto the stage, a high school cheerleader, moved one of the actors like Gymnastics Barbie on a really bad day. I was howling right off the bat.

When they reached a game called Murder Mystery, my boyfriend got to join the action on stage. Have you ever played the game Telephone? Replace whispered words with mimed actions and you'll have this game. Two actors and an audience member disappear backstage so a remaining actor can get ideas for a murder location, a motive and a weapon from the audience. This was doomed to be funny from the start, when we told him to set it in Great Britain…in Big Ben…in a tanning bed! The motive, even more confusing than the location, was that the man had sold the killer a fake Christmas tree. The murder weapon? A key.

Enter the first actor, who sat in a chair while the guy who had collected our suggestions acted out, with motions and sounds but no words, the location, motive and weapon. The actor who viewed this display then acted it out to my boyfriend when they brought him in from back stage. He then had to act it out for the third actor, who tried to guess what on earth was going on. As I'm sure you can imagine, the process and results were hilarious, as each actor took his interpretation of the scene and attempted to pass it along. The part about the tanning bed got lost along the way, the fake Christmas tree turned into Charlie Brown's Christmas special and the key became a frying pan by the end of the game. I liked this part of the show so much, I used the game a week later at a friend's birthday party with excellent results.

After many more games, they finished it up with a fairy tale-Hansel and Gretel-during which the sound guy kept switching genres on the players. Action movie! Now Shakespeare! Now melodrama!

The best part about the show is that it'll never grow old. You could see it five nights in a row and it would be a different performance every time. I highly recommend that you go, and bring any friends you think are really DTF majors at heart. Just remember: If you don't like the show, it's your fault!

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