Improv troupes kill in Westport; The Taffetas is a sugar rush

Westport seemed slow on a Saturday night. As I scarfed a slice between comedy shows, the guy at Joe’s Pizza confirmed it. “Yesterday was slow, too,” he said to paramedics on a break. “Ever since all those shootings.”

Earlier, at the Westport Coffee House, I had watched high-end improv troupes Loaded Dice and the Trip Fives delay their show a full 15 minutes to catch some late arrivals. A dozen trickled in, on top of the dozen who had shown up on time, so I guess this was a good decision. Then, Loaded Dice took the stage and braved a new format: a character-driven, seat-of-the-pants one-act inspired by an audience suggestion.

This necessitates not only an audience but also audience patience, because “character-driven” means that characters must be established. By the end of the 25-minute set, the paltry crowd had been treated to a series of imaginative, impossible weddings presided over by a con-artist priest in a fanny pack.

Then the Trip Fives joined Loaded Dice for a half-hour of anything-goes short scenes that demanded nobody’s patience whatsoever. For much of the set, they had me convulsing with laughter.

I continue to be impressed by the fact that Kansas City boasts so many performers so skilled in pulling laughs out of ether. Sellout crowds roared at recent Improv Thunderdome shows. Without those crowds, they still bring it.

Before the Trip Fives’ solo set, I left Westport for the Screenland Theatre, at 17th Street and Washington, to catch CounterClockwise Comedy’s live roast of Jurassic Park. Before a packed house, the movie screened: Dinosaurs romped, and Sam Neill gaped upward in empty Spielbergian wonder. In row one, the CounterClockwise Comedy crew picked cruelly at the film’s bones. They unleashed a wild stream of jokes, from dumb puns to feminist film criticism to suggestions we take a drink every time Spielberg worked Laura Dern’s ass into the shot. Wayne Knight’s plus-sized floral shirt got called “a Holiday Inn comforter”; the interminable first tour of the dinosaur park was compared, at hilarious length, with the animal-less expanses of the Kansas City Zoo.

Even on a quiet night, after too many shootings and the Royals have been swept, Kansas City offers plenty to laugh about.

A well-sung tribute to the girl groups of the 1950s, written and performed with a warm postmodern nostalgia, Musical Theater Heritage’s The Taffetas is all musical confection.

I enjoyed the layered and languid “See the Pyramids,” which passes like an easy dream, and Kristi Mitchell’s relaxed, affecting take on “The Tennessee Waltz.” Still, these pop hits lack the wit and drama of the theater songs that MTH usually celebrates.

At first, the tunes are bursts of joy, innocent fluff on the order of bonbons. But by the end of Act 1, as they keep coming in a lengthy medley like Lucy and Ethel’s assembly-line chocolates, I was craving something more substantial.

I get it. The cast, a quartet of fiery local singers, doesn’t just belt “Mr. Sandman” and “Dedicated to the One I Love.” They play the Taffetas, fictitious sisters from Muncie, Indiana, a girl group complete with home-sewn sweaters and bouffant wigs, each keyed to one of the four flavors of wholesome whiteness: a blonde, a ginger and so forth. They harmonize prettily on the hits of their genre, taking turns with the lead vocals. Between the songs, they gush about the joys of being Taffetas.

It’s this gushing that gets the show across. The conceit is that the performance takes place on a New York television show in the early 1950s. Director Sarah Crawford emphasizes the sisters’ wide-eyed excitement and camaraderie. Her Taffetas — anchored by that exceptional comedienne Karen Errington — carry on about the long bus ride from Muncie. They stammer through cue-card ads for beauty products. They speak in gee-whiz showbiz patter but hint at the real women underneath.

Errington is Peggy, the shyest. During “I Cried,” her first solo showcase, she plays uncertainty to great effect, her eyes darting and her face stiff with nerves. She hits wrong notes that sound more true than the real ones. But over the course of the number, Errington shapes the kind of dramatic narrative that we might expect from the theater songs of other MTH shows. Her Peggy loosens up, opens her pipes and enlists her diaphragm. She blossoms, by the final chorus, from shy Peggy into a woman discovering that she’s blessed with the gifts of a Karen Errington.

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