Just for Laughs Review – Easy Action & Friends at Montreal Improv, July 22, 2016

Easy Action & Friends
Montreal Improv
July 22, 2015

Allow me to start this off with a qualifier—I am not generally a fan of improv. Perhaps it stems from an initial bad impression many years back, but I always picture a group of well meaning, overtly enthusiastic performers trying to do their best with inane audience prompts that somehow always involve bananas.

Thankfully, this show, featuring improv duos Easy Action and The Stars Are Alive and the Night is On Fire, delivered an hour of improvised insanity that demonstrated just what can be accomplished with the form.

The Stars Are Alive and the Night is On Fire, featuring Mark Little and Dan Beirne, started off by asking for a crowd participant to handle the sound effect cues that would then propel the storyline. That kick-started a demented tale involving Goosebumps author R.L. Stine literally giving birth to his latest novella on a subway track, and a torrid love affair between schmaltzy romance author Danielle Steel and a virgin toll booth attendant. It was a hilarious journey that even cracked both performers up with its farfetched twits and turns.

Easy Action, made up of performers Brent Skagford and Marc Rowland, then took the stage, and buoyed by an audience suggestion of The Police’s “Message in a Bottle,” fired off into an epic narrative of a turbulent father & son relationship. The father wishes his son would follow in his rock-drummer footsteps, while his son is only interested in the flute, the least RN’R instrument known to man.

While the premise in inherently ridiculous, Skagfordand and Rowland channeled such energy and real emotion into the story that you couldn’t help but become invested in their constantly shifting narrative, inappropriate underage sex and all. It was enough to temporarily stay my moratorium on improv, at least for one night.