Inside Rahway, NJ’s historic Union County Performing Arts Center auditorium this chilly Friday, December 16, 2022 evening, audience members prepare themselves for Scared Scriptless, an improvisational comedy show featuring Colin Mochrie and Brad Sherwood, stars of the hit television series, Whose Line Is It Anyway.
The lights dim and the announcement, “Ladies and gentleman, welcome Colin Mochrie and Brad Sherwood!” is made as the two comic actors enter bowing in sync and gesturing to one another. Sherwood greets the crowd stating, “Good evening, Rahway! How are you doing?” explaining, “Tonight, Colin and I will create a show that is completely improvised and suggested by you, the audience.”
Sherwood asks audience members who own businesses to raise their hands before selecting Kyle from Kyle’s Kitchens, telling him, “You will be the sponsor of tonight’s show.” From this point on, Kyle’s Kitchens will be referenced in various skits and songs.
Sherwood tells patrons to warm up their vocal cords by calling out the answers to various questions like “What’s your zodiac sign?” Audience members respond enthusiastically, leaving Sherwood to respond, “Hmm. This is a Jersey crowd. They’re already warm.”
Calling tonight’s Scared Scriptless performance “a political-free show,” Sherwood requests that the audience enjoy “an evening away from the news and issues of the day,” at which point Mochrie jokes, “Now let’s make up some crap!”
After asking audience members to suggest a six-syllable word along with a story topic, Mochrie and Sherwood settle on “microbiology” and “patience” to spontaneously create a “12-Step Program for Ways to Improve One’s Patience.”
Using each letter of “M-I-C-R-O-B-I-O-L-O-G-Y” to remember the first word of each step, Mochrie gets the audience chuckling when he offers up such ineffective suggestions for improving one’s patience as “‘B’ stands for ‘BE PATIENT!’”
The fun continues with the selection of six volunteers from the audience who take the stage and, when signaled, complete the comedians’ sentences to become dialogue in an improvised skit. Together, Mochrie, Sherwood, and the volunteers go on to create an absurd story about a “taxidermist” who is “looking for love” on remote “Battleship Island” where the “half man/half unicorn” he encounters there just happens to be familiar with “Kyle’s Kitchens.”
A high point of the evening is when the duo invites Kathy, a woman from the audience, on stage to interview her. The pair then serenades Kathy — who enjoys cooking and traveling — with an R&B love ballad they create on the spot featuring details of her life. On the first verse, Mochrie and Sherwood take turns inventing alternating lines of the song, and on the second verse they alternate the lyrics word by word. On the final verse, however, they manage to create their song lyrics at the exact same time, singing face-to-face in sync, much to the astonishment of the crowd.
To follow up, Mochrie puts on noise-cancelling headphones and sits with his back to the audience as Sherwood explains the next skit where he will play a detective who must get Mochrie, a criminal, to confess to a completely ridiculous crime suggested by the crowd. As Sherwood gives Mochrie clues, the audience provides Mochrie with applause as his guesses get closer and closer to the crime he committed which involved “slapping a gorilla at the zoo” and “calling a cashier ‘Mom’” in “Northeast Zumbaberg” at a “mother-in-law recycling plant” and “frog grooming salon” with an “Oreo dunking fork.”
Following a short intermission, Mochrie and Sherwood invite Marcie and Adrienne, two sisters from the audience, onto the stage to make sound effects as they create an outlandish scenario about a pair of inventors who travel in a hovercraft to a trade show to share their crazy inventions. Hilarity ensues each time the curly-haired “Annie Twins” create ineffective sounds and frustrate the kooky inventors.
Following enthusiastic applause, Sherwood helps UCPAC to announce the winner of tonight’s 50/50 theater benefit raffle in a novel way. After asking everyone in the auditorium who bought a raffle ticket to stand, he has them sit down as he reads the winning ticket number just a few digits at a time. Then, the actors make up a story about a “repairman” who fixes a “lava lamp,” told through the use of spontaneously-created song lyrics to tunes including The Monkees’ “I’m a Believer,” The Bangles’ “Walk Like an Egyptian,” and Elton John’s “Crocodile Rock,” leaving the audience in stitches.
After Mochrie announces, “You guys have been a great audience! If only there was a way we could remember this show for the rest of our lives,” Sherwood suggests, “Let’s write a song about ‘The Night Colin and Brad came to Rahway!’” As an instrumental track to Frank Sinatra’s “My Way” plays, Mochrie and Sherwood create a song which mentions “taxidermists” and “Kathy” along with other key characters, phrases, and jokes from the evening and even includes lyrics like, “We hope our little show brought you smiles/For all your kitchen needs call Kyle’s.”
Audience members hold up their phone flashlights and sway to the music before Mochrie and Sherwood conclude the number, singing, “This was our show/We have to go/We did it…Rahway!” The crowd stands and cheers and Sherwood exclaims, “You were an absolutely amazing audience!’ before he and Mochrie take a well-deserved bow.
As audience members make their way out of the UCPAC auditorium, we chat with several in the crowd who share their thoughts on tonight’s performance. Exclaims Teresa from Chester, NY, “It was a great night out! I loved the show, and I really loved the improvisation,” revealing, “We’re big fans of Whose Line is It Anyway on TV and it was hilarious seeing the performers here live in this beautiful theater.”
Teresa’s husband, Robert, agrees, adding, “It really was a great show,” explaining, “Sometimes it was just Colin Mochrie’s facial expressions and gestures that made me laugh!” Teresa and Robert’s daughter, Alex, declares, “This show was so funny! I was laughing as hard as I do when I watch Whose Line Is It Anyway on TV,” before noting, “I especially liked the taxidermist skit where the audience members completed Colin and Brad’s sentences.”
Jodi from Rahway acknowledges, “Before tonight, I wasn’t that familiar with Brad Sherwood, but he is as funny as Colin Mochrie,” pointing out, “Both comedians really know how to connect with the audience — their wit is so quick and quirky — and I just loved how every skit was so interactive.”
Kathy from East Brunswick — the audience member whom Colin and Brad made up the R&B song about — asserts, “To be able to be a part of this show was unbelievable! It was a wonderful experience, and a lot of fun,” disclosing, “Colin and Brad’s spontaneous singing was remarkable — and maybe even a little overwhelming — but it made for a really fun night.” Kathy’s husband John, concurs, noting, “It was an absolutely great show and my ‘star,’ Kathy, was amazing!”
Sherilyn from Edison calls tonight’s performance “Really great,” acknowledging, “Colin was just as adorable in person as he is on TV,” and adding, “I especially liked the sound effects skit with the inventors — it was side-splittingly funny.” Lastly, Sherilyn’s friend, Poonam from Edison, insists, “Tonight’s show was as funny as the Whose Line Is It Anyway shows you see on TV,” before concluding, “I’ve been to a lot of live comedy shows and I’ve never laughed more than I did tonight!”
To learn more about Colin Mochrie and Brad Sherwood please go to colinandbradshow.com. For information on upcoming performances at Rahway’s UCPAC — including Get the Led Out on Feb. 3 and Broadway’s Mandy Patinkin on Feb. 18 — please click on ucpac.org.
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