The entirety of Troy was packed on a beautiful Friday Night for a multitude of reasons. Nice weather, colleges are in session, dinner reservations, etc. And although parking was not in abundance, the laughter was, as the cast of the groundbreaking sketch comedy show “Whose Line Is It Anyway?” came barreling into the Troy Savings Bank Music Hall to a sold-out crowd of all ages. “Whose Line?”, which ran in Britain from 1988-1999, yielded a massively successful American spin-off, which has been airing on and off since 1998. Many of the popular cast members were on stage, including the great character actor Ryan Stiles (Drew Carey Show, Two and a Half Men, Leanne), Greg Proops (voice of Bob The Builder, Star Wars: Episode 1), Gary Anthony Williams (voice of Uncle Ruckus on The Boondocks, MAD, Boston Legal), and veteran sketch comedy greats Jeff B. Davis and Joel Murray. Long-time musical leader Laura Hall was advertised but was unable to be there, and a skilled pianist named Alex did a wonderful job. I wish I could give credit to his last name, but it was indecipherable to me when they announced it due to the applause.
Like the popular series, the live performance draws heavily from crowd participation, starting the night with people in the first few rows throwing written suggestions into a bucket for a game later in the night, the classic Whose Line game “Sentences.” Based on the UK version’s game, “Scenes From a Hat”, a 10-year-old boy named Alex was asked about his name and hobby (playing video games), and a conversation between him and his mother was acted out on stage by Proops (Alex) and Siles (his mother). They kept the makeshift storyline going by using those lines pulled from the bucket, which were quite risque, and both actors noted the misspelling of many of the words. One word being “misspelled” was a joke referencing the context of the word “coming.”
Prior to that, highlights of the evening involved “Helping Hands,” in which two fans, Leah and Rosie, were picked to move Proops and Williams, like life-size action figures, to the backdrop of Albany’s Tulip Fest.
Next was Stiles’ “The Ghost of Alex Trebek” in an improv game of “Jeopardy!”. The actors portrayed four contestants, with a great reference by Joel Murray (whose character was “Dick Sprinkles,” who worked for WTEN) which “conveniently could be found on Channel 10”, Proops portrayed an illegal Swiss Banker from Amsterdam, Williams was a McDonald’s employee, and Davis played “Mary from Duanseville,” keeping the local references abundant. The Jeopardy answers were chosen by audience members who yelled out “Samuel Gompers,” “Camelot,” “the Tinder app,” “Wine,” and “Kumquat”, with the cast making up humorous questions to the given answers.
My highlight of the night was when a couple named Cheryl and Mike were brought up on stage to tell their story of how they met, and to have the cast reenact their version of how they met, with the local couple chiming in on the microphones with “ding ding ding” when they got it right and a “whomp whomp” sound when they were wrong. Cheryl and Mike so humorously made those sounds at the perfect times about their relationship, and the audience was rolling. The abundance of local references within the sketch was fantastic, starting with David trying to pronounce Gansevoort to no avail, so Mike said, “Just say Wilton.” The couple met in high school in the early ’80s at Shenendehowa, which—trying to get the cast to pronounce correctly—was a sketch all on its own. And the couple split for two years because of, let’s just say, some bad habits, but then found each other again a little later in life. The recreation of their story was absolutely tremendous, and from my decades of watching the US and UK versions of this show, I would pair that up to anything that I have seen on TV.
Two more crowd members were picked later in the show for the game “Sound Effects,” which saw fans Lindsay and Kevin creating sound effects on the microphone for the cast while they pretended to go duck hunting, with the biggest laughs coming from the gun, which shot ducks out of it to hit the ducks in the sky. The story soon became about them trying to escape the woods on their motorcycle, which wasn’t given enough sound to start, but no worries, they escaped on time.
Another classic “Whose Line?” sketch concluded the evening, called “Greatest Hits,” where Stiles, Joel, and Proops portrayed the ghost of Gordon Lightfoot, Dan Akroyd, and Pope Leo, respectively, as pitchmen for a music compilation about unicycling—a topic yelled out by another lucky fan. Williams and Davis sang improvised songs on the subject in random styles of music, the first being “trucker songs,” the second being a disco song called “Stuck In My Spokes”, with Styles making the joke, “Do you know why disco music isn’t around anymore? The Drummer died!”, before their final song, “One Seat, Two Hearts”, a jazz ballad. This song was a highlight of the night as Williams went into a spot-on impersonation of Louis Armstrong, with the gag being that their song kept going and going long after both actors thought they were supposed to stop.
That brilliant bit was the finale for 90 minutes of uproarious laughs by the packed house. It was incredible seeing all of these great talents that have been gracing our televisions across the globe for decades performing for us and with us. It is always a blast seeing these tours and the Troy Savings Bank Music Hall was the most lovely of backdrops for this show. I hope this becomes an annual affair at the venue.
