Review: ‘Streetcar’ as improv? It could be in ‘Tennessee Williams Unscripted’

If you think improvisational theater is a freewheeling genre that’s strictly for laughs, you haven’t experienced an Impro Theatre show. The seasoned team at Impro raises the stakes of improv.

Impro doesn’t do quick blackout scenes that are the stock-in-trade of improv. Nor do actors perform scripted sketches and characters established in rehearsal. Impro’s process is to study a chosen playwright or genre, then craft an entire play around a single audience suggestion.

“Tennessee Williams Unscripted,” the group’s production at the Falcon Theatre in Burbank, has been done at different venues. Then again, it has never been done before. No Impro show is preplanned. Like a sand sculpture in a rising tide, each is unique, never to be seen again.

During a recent Sunday matinee, performers asked the audience for a memorable artifact passed down from one’s grandparents — in this case, a huge and apparently hideous fork and spoon wall hanging, the surprisingly fruitful premise for a rip-roaring “drama” very much in the tone of Williams at his most histrionic.

The cast alternates. One can never be sure which actors will appear in which show. This outing featured Brian Lohmann, who has directed many past Impro productions, playing a wispy Southern gentleman who transforms into a sadistic overlord. Others in the cast included Lisa Fredrickson, Kelly Holden-Bashar, Brian Michael Jones, Jo McGinley, Edi Patterson and Mike McShane — all excellent.

Michael C. Smith’s scenic design evokes a subtropical ambience for the steamy goings-on, Sandra Burns’ proper 1950s costumes are a subtle counterpoint to the onstage degeneracy, while Leigh Allen’s versatile lighting nicely accommodates the unanticipated. Offstage “technical improvisers,” Madison Goff and Alex Caan, contribute spot-on sound effects and music that are central to this fun and rigorously executed entertainment.

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“Tennessee Williams Unscripted,” Falcon Theatre, 4252 Riverside Drive, Burbank. 8 p.m. Fridays, 4 and 8 p.m. Saturdays, 4 p.m. Sundays. Ends July 31. $41.50-$44. (818) 955-8101. www.FalconTheatre.com Running time: about 1 hour, 20 minutes

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