These days, entertainment does not come cheap. A fun Friday night out can end up wearing a hole in your pocket. Fortunately, the Buttered Niblets' performance - which took place last Friday in the Arellano Theater - was a whole lot of bang for the buck necessary for entry.
The only improvisational troupe at Hopkins gave a truly solid performance to a devoted audience, who responded with a whole lot of belly laughs.
Luckily, it didn't matter if you were a few minutes late-the show started off with sophomores Mike Zaccardo and Jake Appet performing their usual inspiring dance moves on the unlit theater stage.
The rest of the troupe ran out shortly, and after showering the audience with candy - always a crowd-pleaser - they dove straight into the madness that would inevitably ensue.
The show was structured around several "games" that Niblets members played on stage.
These games served as centerpieces for the sum of the comedic action that took place over the course of the night.
The first game played, Armando, began with an improvised monologue - supplied by Mackenzie Astin - that the troupe then had to act out and elaborate on.
Almost immediately, senior Eric Levitz was on top of the game. When Appet accuses their baseball team of not being sufficiently integrated, Levitz retorts "Look, all I do is sharpen the bats."
The next game, Half Life, showcased Zaccardo and junior Jeremy Bremer's talents.
The duo performed a scene in sixty-four seconds, then re-performed it in progressively shorter time segments, culminating in a four-second depiction of the entire scene.
Watching Bremer repeatedly launch himself backward into the stage wall as a result of Zaccardo accidentally blowing him up only got more hilarious as the scene's duration trended toward zero.
Half Life was followed by Movie Critic, during which senior Kempton Baldridge and sophomore Ian White gave their experienced opinions on this year's "Best March of Wooly Mammoth," and "Worst Time Travel."
During the former, Yip spits some hot fire and is reminiscent of Queen Latifa - only more hilarious.
As far as the latter, junior and sole female player Remy Patrizio informed Levitz "That's not a time machine, that's a photo booth . . . we're at prom."
The final game, in which all of the players ranted about subjects suggested by the audience, was a great success.
Tackling the downsides of snow and the complicated topic of hitting on girls was no pressure for the troupe.
Indeed, Levitz made an incredibly convincing mad scientist with daddy issues, bent on creating a water evaporating machine that would hasten doomsday.
As he confided to his faithful assistant Zaccardo, "It's easier to kill than to open up my heart."
The laughs kept coming as Baldridge and White tried to come up with a way to stop being lonely.
This ill-fated plot quickly turned into a sociopathic plan to kidnap people to be their friends. After several failed attempts at high fiving, Baldridge mourned "See, this is why we're lonely!"
Improv comedy is one of the most challenging forms of the art.
Creating jokes on-the-fly that need to cater to the majority of an audience is not an easy task.
Luckily for the Buttered Niblets, their comedians have developed a stage presence that makes them instantly likeable.
Moreover, one of the hardest parts of improvising -a nd the sign of true comedic wit - is the ability to reincorporate old jokes into new scenarios.
The entire troupe does this with ease, and one of the last jokes of the night was also one of the funniest.
The Niblets, through their poise, make spot-comedy look positively natural.
White returns to Bremer's Genghis Khan baseball team as the bat sharpener. The show ended with whoops and cheers from the audience. The Niblets can certainly congratulate themselves on laughs well earned.
If you missed out this time around, be sure to catch their next show on April 2. It's a dollar well spent.
