Improvised Shakespeare: Gabriel's Adventures

A full play ending Florida Studio Theater’s weekend Sarasota Improv Festival, “Gabriel’s Adventures” was created by The Improvised Shakespeare Company of Chicago from the suggested name of a hero and an action involving that hero. As company creator, director and actor Blaine Swen explained, the show is unwritten -- and not being planned or rehearsed, played completely spontaneously for one time only.

The company gets its name from using Shakespeare’s writing style, types of structure and characters, and an all-male cast. There are generalized costumes but no planned scenery, props, curtain, changes of lighting, or sound used for background or integrally. Some steps and a well lit-cyclorama, set up for an FST musical, served the troupe well, however.

In between a prologue and epilogue (in true Shakespearian fashion) comes the main plot of a love affair between Gabriel and an unlikely, portly heroine, Rosalind. Gabriel’s best friend Lucifer opposes the match. A Petruchio comes in to push Rosalind away from Gabriel and gets help from two other ladies, one of whom (Anna) will get involved with Lucifer. Gabriel’s father makes him head of an army versus Spanish invaders.

Somehow a secret ocean in Verona figures into love, war and strange happenings with fish. Jealousies, as well as physical conflict, figure in couplings, killings, even suicides. Some are told of in Punch-and-Judy style.

And what would a Shakespeare play be without a Duke? This one also has an extra -- Beowulf’s mother Grendel! Gabriel turns out to be Swiss and, guard-like, kills the beast! Ghosts save the hero at the end to go on, thus turning the tragic into a comedy.

It’s impossible to highlight just one performer because each is perfect and versatile to boot. Lay on all honors to The Improvised Shakespeare Company. I rate them along with the original Second City and the Neo-Futurists as the best Improv artists I have ever seen and heard.