Colin Mochrie (left) leads the improv, and Asad Mecci provides the hypnosis for subjects (center) in Hyprov: Improv Under Hypnosis.
Near the opening of Hyprov: Improv Under Hypnosis, Colin Mochrie refers to himself as “international comic icon,” but if you haven’t ever seen What’s My Line, Anyway? you might be skeptical of his sweeping claim. (Mochrie’s wry delivery suggests that the description is a bit of a spoof.) Nevertheless, the Canadian native is definitely the funnier half of Hyprov, which combines two disciplines into something unusual and raucously entertaining.
Under the direction of Stan Zimmerman, Mochrie shares the stage with hypnotist Asad Mecci, another Canadian, who is the emcee for the show, which they co-created with Jeff Andrews. Having solicited 20 audience members to come on stage, Mecci illustrates what he does by asking the audience to put their hands into a steeple position and try not to let their forefingers touch. It turns out to be universally difficult. With this example of things we might not have known being true, he emphasizes that “hypnosis is a science.”
One of the “hyprovisers” sings a pop duet with Mochrie. Photographs by Aaron Cobb.
As Mecci puts the volunteers and under his spell, he repeatedly intones variations of “People on stage. Look at me. Great eye contact. Keep it up. Eye contact with me.” On occasion he asks them to close their eyes. He waves his hands in front of faces, and, as he later explains, looks for signals. “Their breathing changes, their eyes tear up.”
A couple of exercises follow, to identify the most susceptible volunteers. “You’re lying on a beach. It’s very hot,” he says. At this, the subjects all loll and appear to be on beach chairs, and, after a couple more tests and his encouragement—“The sound of my voice takes you deeper. The deeper you go, the better you feel”—the group shrinks to a troupe of five to accompany Mochrie: three men and two women. One man has an unfortunate haircut. Britt, a man of about 40 with shaggy brown hair, looks like he might have played football in school. There are an Asian American woman, a black man, and a woman named Regina, perhaps in her late fifties, who gives the most pronounced reactions to Mecci’s instructions.
“The sound of my voice takes you deeper. The deeper you go, the better you feel.”
When Mochrie joins the group for a series of comic frameworks, he follows the tradition of asking the audience for suggestions. The first improv is about a man (Mochrie) celebrating a not-real holiday (Lumberjack Day) whose boyfriend (the bad haircut) wants to ask him to marry him. The hitch is that Mochrie must be wheedled to sit down before the question is popped. As soon as Mochrie is proposed to, however, Mecci stops the action and chooses the black performer to enter the scene as the haircut guy’s “jilted ex-lover.”
The sketches pick up a rhythm and become more complicated. The next is a funeral of a hybrid animal (the audience responses resulted in a giraffe-platypus with the name of Winston), and the five subjects must deliver eulogies. In this one, Britt hilariously weeps uncontrollably, blows his nose into his COVID mask, and screams out, “Winston!” The Asian American woman talks about Winston’s heritage: “You were a platypus and a giraffe! But this is a liberal city!”
Throughout, Mecci periodically encourages the “hyprovisers” like a life coach: “You’re safe and secure. Calm and comfortable. Every breath that you take, takes you deeper.”
Mochrie explains the situation for an improvisation as Mecci and a troupe member stand by.
Having done a bit of improv, I can attest that success often depends on the quality of the audience’s suggestions and the skills of the performers. The results on the night I attended were solidly enjoyable, even when the audience choices didn’t seem promising. In a Western sketch, Mochrie and his daughter were criminals—their crime, per an audience member, was stamp collecting. Mochrie gave the suggestion the raised eyebrow it deserved, but played the hand he was dealt very well. Showing his legacy to his daughter, he says, “There’s a red stamp from Monaco, a blue triangle thing from Lithuania.” And he tells her with heartfelt concern: “I hope stamp collecting won’t be illegal one day.”
Their showdown with Sheriff Britt and his deputies in a saloon also resulted in a difficult suggestion: the weapons were chopsticks. Here Mecci stepped in with a curve ball: the final battle was to be conducted in slow motion, and the result was like a riotously warped samurai movie, with performers hurling imaginary chopsticks like javelins, and keeling over as they were killed. Mochrie and Mecci have the skill to snatch victory from improv scraps that point toward defeat.
Other sketches confirmed that hypnosis and improv are a reliable comedy formula. For anyone who appreciates improv and is curious about hypnotism (there can’t be many who do it the other way around), Hyprov will prove a fascinating and funny discovery.
Hyprov: Improv Under Hypnosis plays through Oct. 30 at the Daryl Roth Theater (101 E. 15th St.). Evening performances are at 7 p.m. Thursday through Sunday, with an additional 10 p.m. performance on Saturdays. For tickets and information, visit hyprov.com.
