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Rob«rt PoliakSecond City Players Deserve CriticismP 0 .AJrDespite GrowingAdmiration for the increasing prestige and originality of Second City as a home for contemporary satire should not blind anybody to signs of deterioration on North Wells St. *A Knocking Within*, the company's latest revue,justifies some knocking from without, strictlyunder the heading of constructive criticism.Second City was hatched at the Compass on 55th St.when Nichols was a'juvenile and May was a gleam in an agent’s eye. The old gang at the Compass concentrated on improvisation.The Second City technique is based on improvisation, and one of its specialities at every performance is to take a few catch lines from the audience and fit them together cleverly into a coherent sketch. But this is only a small part of Second City’s characteristic revue program. The trouble is that the entire program has now begun to seem like an improvisation, and sooner or later the clients aregoing to complain.The planned sketches on the new bUJ are as shrewd and generally witty as ever, sometimes topical sometimes timeless in implication. A seedy U.S. army officer, exiled to Viet Nam, tries vainly to make the natives warlike as he explains the very fluid situation to a fatuous American correspondent. An avant garde suburban group high-hats some newcomers to the commuting set, patronising them in their own shiny new home. A renter of wigs encounters a customer whose personality goes through a dangerous change every time he tries on another hair net.How much planning has gone into the planned sketches is a matter for debate. OnFame/Prestigestage none of them lives up to its possibilities because the company has begun to take iteasy. The mood of improvisation no ion ref seems the result of deliberation but rai -et of slip-shod preparation. The delivery is haphazard, the punch lines of ter inaudible, the short silences, while an actor waits for a pick-up line from a colleague, almost embarrassing. JAt times, as *A Knocking Within* proca vis on its blithe way, a customer gets the notltt that the entire cast is in on a secret joke, Mit is barely willing to convey to the audience.Swallowed lines, lines delivered up-staggy lines that don’t get as far a a. the fifth rov Of tables, lines devok} of necessary smack, all give the impression of what the hell, it’s c Jtya living.Nobody is going to suggest that a Sec Ad City revue should be directed and set like a Jean Kerr comedy. The air of informal!t AC Wells St. la pan of the charm of the place. Paul Sill a and his attractive serfs have created something new and fresh, a satirical stage that covers the local, national and international scenes with wry humor and biting irony. Nevertheieas what the company needs right now is a dose of old-fashioned theatricaldiscipline. !The Second City sketches art not written out in advance. Maybe they need to be. The ancient virtues of pace, timing, contrast, errv* phasis ought to be considered when Mr.! Hi starts to work on his next show. No one ’.♦* lieves for a minute that the force* at Second City are tired of the unioue institution thay themselves have created. Yet today thay give ahint of weariness and even of condescension.And when a company suggests that it is looking down its nose at the audience, it is bagging for trouble.
Newspaper Details
Hyde Park Herald
Hyde Park, Illinois, US
Wed, Mar 14, 1962
Page 7
Full Page
Clipped by
Loyola U.
IL, USA 30 Mar 2020
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Hyde Park Herald
