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Nov. 30, 2007
Girls' Night Out is good fun
The staff at Talmud Torah were targets for improv comedy show.
BAILA LAZARUS
The sound of uproarious laughter could be heard echoing in the halls of Vancouver Talmud Torah last week. Comedian Dan Joffre and company were the focal point of Girls' Night Out Nov. 18, which included the roasting of several key Talmud Torah staff.
More than 100 women – mostly staff and parents – gathered in the Talmud Torah auditorium, shmoozing over wine and snacks, before sitting down to be entertained by one of Vancouver's premier improvisational artists.
Joffre, who actually started out in a career as a professional wrestler, has been doing improv comedy for more than a decade and has been voted MVP at the World Improv Championships seven times. Improv fans in Vancouver will know him as a mainstay in the Vancouver TheatreSports League and Chutzpah! Festival fans might remember him from the closing show Glatt to be Back in 2006. His company, That's Hilarious Entertainment, along with the corporate division, Hilarious Corp., produce shows all over the Lower Mainland.
Joffre opened up the VTT show by allowing women to ask him questions about his life and work, eliciting the predictable "Are you single?" "Do you wear boxers or briefs?" and "Are you circumcised?" – questions almost de rigeur in a comedy night with an audience comprised entirely of women.
As is the norm, the improv sketches that followed took random suggestions from the audience, which Joffre and supporting actors Margret Nyfors, Jennifer Wagner, Doug Balfour and Derek Shelton, incorporated into the dialogue.
In one hilarious El Al security scene, Joffre, playing to his strength at impersonating an Israeli accent, pretended to be an El Al agent going through a passenger's luggage. Asking for a prompt from the audience, Joffre wanted to know what he might find in the luggage, and got the not-surprising "sex toy" answer. Joffre then pulled out the imaginary toy from the suitcase, propped it in his arms like he's holding a giant Uzi and sent the audience into convulsions.
In the following sketch, demonstrating why he has been winning awards for his improv work, Joffre created a song out of the items he pulled randomly out of a woman's purse. Using the contents – gum, a cellphone, antiperspirant, face cream, a ring of keys and an iPod – he sang a James Brown-sounding tune along the theme of what to do during an earthquake. (A suggestion from the audience of a natural disaster in Vancouver.)
"The world is shakin' but I'm looking so good cuz I'm wearing 50 creams," he sang, strutting around the stage, while the audience howled.
Further sketches included audience members on stage in a game show answering the question: "Jewish or not Jewish?"
"Macaroni and cheese," he stated to one of the women. "Not Jewish," she said. "Hot dog and cheese?" "Not Jewish." "Smoked meat on white bread?" The "ewwws" from the audience on that one made the answer easy.
In the game show lightning round, the contestants' Jewishness was really put to the test when they had to answer yes-or-no questions without saying yes or no.
In the final part of the performance, Joffre got a little more personal with Talmud Torah by focusing on issues specific to the school, such as parking problems in the Safeway lot across the street, which hit home with many in the audience. He then pulled out all the stops by calling school principal Cathy Lowenstein on stage.
With Wagner playing Lowenstein and Joffre playing her husband, Jeff, the two actors went through a typical day, from getting up in the morning to going to school, to dealing with whether recess should be held indoors or out, to kids with bad lunches and teachers wanting to leave school to go to a sale. The troupe had really done their research, having visited the school prior to the evening and asking the right questions, so that every topic raised resulted in more shrieks of enjoyment.
Lowenstein was armed with a Harpo Marx-styled horn, honking it any time one of the actors did something that would have been out of step with the normal course of events.
Sue Hector, Ari Schiff and Reisa Schneider, among others, were also targeted in the sketch, which was the highlight of the show.
Baila Lazarus is a freelance writer, photographer and illustrator living in Vancouver. Her work can be seen at www.orchiddesigns.net.
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