Crowd Control finished off their year of comedy performances with one last show on the evening of April 19 to say goodbye to their two graduating directors: Roy Shakerchi ’18 and Gabe Adler-Cohen ’18.
Advertising the show on their Facebook page as a funeral for Roy and Gabe, Crowd Control followed through with the bit at the actual event. The younger members of the improv group entered dressed in black, along with some melodramatic sobbing, and introduced the night as a farewell to the two seniors.
The group then called on the audience to applaud in order to bring back the ghosts of their deceased directors. This gimmick transitioned the night smoothly into the main section of the show, for which Roy and Gabe were fortunately resurrected.
The high energy of the night continued throughout. After a full year of practices and shows together, Crowd Control was in top form, playing effortlessly off one another and shooting one-liners faster than the audience could finish laughing.
They began the show with a few line-games, including the crowd favorite “Sex With Me Is Like…” during which they pulled various suggestions from the audience. They later transitioned into sketches taking place on a subway, including a surprisingly heartwarming scene about a stripper and her son.
The group closed the show with their quintessential long-form improv. The members of the group took turns telling comedic stories from their own lives which they then turned into a series of sometimes unrelated, sometimes related, vignettes.
With a recurring theme of playground disputes, various elementary school-aged characters took the stage to claim tyranny over younger students. Little boys with lollipops also made multiple horrifying appearances, not to mention a dog that turned into a wolf that turned into a bear that turned into a dinosaur that turned into a dragon. As is the nature of comedy, what made total sense in the moment now seems to defy explanation. You had to be there.
Crowd Control kept the night casual. Their willingness to interact with the audience and break the fourth wall to recognize when a joke did not quite land only increased the hilarity of the show.
At the end of the show, a brief eulogy was given for Roy and Gabe by the other members of Crowd Control—a eulogy in this case meaning an extended series of mocking jokes—thanking them and wishing them the best in their post-Crowd Control life.
