Come Sail Away
PIT sketch group Harvard Sailing Team shifts from
physical to cerebral in new show
Having
lost two of its members to the lure of Los Angeles, People’s Improv
Theater sketch troupe Harvard Sailing Team has actually benefited to
some extent from a less-crowded stage but is missing some of the energy
that came from its numbers.
In the now seven-member group’s new show, “Ms. Larsen’s Class,” seen
Jan. 23, the better sketches came in the first half of the show, namely
one piece featuring Sara Taylor and Katie Larsen as host and guest on a
public access “Cat Talk” show overshadowed by sounds of a violent
struggle coming through the walls of their apartment. In another strong
piece, Taylor stood out again, playing part of a couple, with Adam
Lustick, who make ever more ridiculous demands of their hosts (Clayton
Early and Jen Curran).
Group member Billy Scafuri didn’t fare quite so well in another piece
with the premise of the rest of the group, playing a family, holding an
intervention for him, as the father, to stop his incessant bad
joke-telling.
Compared to a previous performance of the full nine-member group last
year (seen but not reviewed), in this show Harvard Sailing Team appeared
to be recalibrating their energy. The one piece recalled from the prior
show, mined the group’s collective kinetic ability, greeting each other
with air “humps’ and handclaps. The aforementioned pieces, both those
that worked and those that didn’t work so well, were less reliant on
physical movement and more focused on fueling humor through dialogue and
premises.
Overall, if Harvard Sailing Team is indeed rebalancing itself, it
could be well served by dropping some of the weaker bits seen in this
show and bring back a little more of the physical comedy they execute so
well.
Harvard Sailing Team continues its Saturday night run at The PIT
Jan. 30 and Feb. 6 and 13.