“Period costume improv? You bet. And it works. ‘Dickens Unleashed’ is ‘Masterpiece Theatre’ gone mad…”
Review: ‘Dickens Unleashed: Improvised Tales of Bleak Victorian England’
By Jeanne Claire van Ryzin | Monday, November 30, 2009, 02:47 PM
That the sprawling Victorian tales of Charles Dickens can make for good improv theater shouldn’t seem all that strange.
After all, Dickens’ tales are filled outsized caricatures and long and winding episodic story lines that are riddled with bizarre and unexpected twists.
Anything can happen, and frequently anything does. Wholly benevolent characters appear out of nowhere to change the course of events. Utterly evil characters appear out of nowhere to change the course of events. Amazingly good luck occurs. Amazingly bad luck occurs.
Indeed, Dickens offers a narrative free-for-all that’s ripe for some fun farce. Fun is what ‘Dickens Unleashed: Improvised Tales of Bleak Victorian England’ is. Running Saturdays through the end of the month at the Hideout Theatre, the show offers a troupe of improv actors in Victorian garb who ask for just one prompt from the audience. And from that spins a 70-minute improvised show that at once plays homage to Dickens’ tales and has utter fun with their maudlin style.
Period costume improv? You bet. And it works. ‘Dickens Unleashed’ is ‘Masterpiece Theatre’ gone mad and goofball.
Smartly, directors Jessica Arjet and Kaci Beeler don’t allow for any cheap anachronisms to filter in to this offbeat Victorian world. No silly iPhone jokes here. Instead, it’s all pocketwatches and stovetop hats, orphans and buckets of coal, silly Cockney accents and lots of British balderdash.
That all makes for some pretty refreshing comedic twists and turns — and plenty of improv challenge for the eight-member troupe (the line-up varies a bit from each performance). Beeler does a particularly sharp turn as the striving orphan girl at the center of the action. And as the narrator/protagonist. Kareem Badr booms the very Dickensian-sounding narrative while sitting at a writer’s desk even if it’s delightfully off-kilter Dickensian narrative.
In a nice gesture, there’s a family-friendly version of the show offered, with a band of “orphans” (studnets from the Hideout’s youth improv classes) offering an opening set. Yeah, “orphans” — it’s Dickens, you know.
‘Dickens Unleashed: Improvised Tales of Bleak Victorian England’ continues 8 p.m. Saturdays through Dec. 26. Family-friendly show at 6 p.m. on Saturdays. Hideout Theatre, 617 Congress Ave. $11. www.hideoutheatre.com.
Pictured: Kareem Badr and Kaci Beeler.