Blank! the Musical – New World Stages, New York

Matthew Van Colton, Douglas Widick and Andrew Knox (back row), Nicole C. Hastings, Katie Dufrense and Tessa Hersh (front row) in Blank! the Musical at New World Stages, New York. Picture Jenny Anderson

Blank! the Musical continues at New World Stages, New York, until 14 December.

The first ten minutes or so of Blank! the Musical are spent in convincing the audience that everything we will see and hear will be “made up on the spot”. The host for this Off-Broadway offering, T.J. Mannix, assures us of this several times and furthermore solicits testimony as to the truth of this claim from the music director, Mike Descoteaux, and the production stage manager, Katie Kavett. Descoteaux, who also plays the piano, is ensconced stage right with two other musicians, while Kavett’s validation comes from off-stage via loud speaker.

Once this is established, Mannix moves on to tell the audience how it will help create the musical, which will be seen for the first and probably last time on this stage on this very evening. Suggestions for such elements as a show title, song titles, a key line of dialogue and musical notes for a dominant theme are to be shouted out, and the audience as a whole can then vote on which to use. The voting is to be done via cell phone by calling up a specially designed app. It’s almost like technology’s final death grip on the making of theatre. It also explains the title, doesn’t it? The audience fills in the “blank”.

The show title chosen at the performance visited was That’s What She Said! The phrase was sung often throughout the evening by the troupe of six actors, in moods ranging from ominous to triumphant, although I’m not sure what it had to do with the plot that finally evolved.

I’m certainly not going to argue with Mannix’s claim as to the spontaneity of the show. It has all the earmarks of improvisatory theatre, such as dialogue studded with incongruous responses, sudden gestures or flashes of wit that break up fellow actors, and a general mood of instinctive game-playing among colleagues of a similar mindset. The programme bios for the company are marked by years of experience with improvisational companies, most notably The Second City, the Chicago-based granddaddy of improvisational theatre. The bio for T.J. Shanoff, a co-creator and the director of Blank!, notes he has been with The Second City since 1997.

The ladies in the company are Katie Dufrense, Nicole C. Hastings and Tessa Hersh. The gentlemen are Andrew Knox, Matthew Van Colton and Douglas Widick. They are a tireless group of performers who all prove to be deft in the art of improvisation. It’s not surprising, though, that their inspiration occasionally flags during the prolonged 90 minutes or so that their on-the-spot created musical lasts. Improvisation, in my experience, works best for the sketch format.

What took shape in my evening at Blank! was a moderately amusing concoction involving three couples who all seem to have unnatural fetishes for chocolate. It draws them together, pulls them apart and brings them back together again, while they’re all in attendance at a place of learning called Chocolate U. As you might expect, the humour sometimes became a bit infantile. Impressive, though, was the way the company pulled together to create production numbers “on the spot”, such as the finale declaring musically that ”chocolate is forever”.

Most importantly, the six actors seem to enjoy working together, and their bonhomie proves infectious to the audience, who manages to fill the theatre with frequent gales of laughter and appreciative applause. As a matter of fact, the process seems rather more involving than the actual musical it produced. Stephen Sondheim need not feel threatened.

Ron Cohen