11 Non-Blondes appears every Friday (except June 26) at Hear.Say Brewing + Theater, and also as part of the Yes, Ann Improv Festival on June 25 at the Michigan Theater. | Ainsley E.
The theater at Hear.Say Brewing + Theater is small and intimate, with rows of chairs facing a low, narrow stage backed by black theater curtains. On a cool spring evening, it was packed with couples on date nights and an excited group of improv enthusiasts behind us, who I gathered were students in one of Hear.Say’s classes.
Onstage, Pete and Michael—senior members of the theater’s house troupe, 11 Non-Blondes—were explaining how this was going to go. “This is improv, which means we’re making stuff on the stage,” said Pete, dryly. “The whole show is made up.” Michael then ran us through a quick warm-up, getting the audience comfortable with shouting out answers to prompts. “What is your favorite color?” (“Black!”) “What is your dream vacation?” (“Japan!”) “What was your least favorite Christmas gift?” (“A vibrator!”)
With that muster out of the way, 11 Non-Blondes got to work.
Related: Beer and Improv: Tony DeRosa hopes to make Hear.Say part of the fabric of the town (Aug. 2024)
On the one hand, there were only six performers onstage that night, four men and two women; on the other hand, they were all, in fact, brunettes. The show was broken up into two halves with a five-minute intermission. Each half consisted of three games. “New Choice” had the performers act out a scene, randomly prompted to take back the last thing they had said and come up with a new line. “FM Radio” featured performers playing different radio stations, with topics suggested by the audience, which the emcee would then “tune” to. “Ring the Bell” culminated, somehow, in a performer named Ian drawling, “Why is my entire living room covered in fresh-grated parmesan cheese?”
I will spoil this review by saying that while I do not consider myself a passionate devotee of improvisational comedy, I found 11 Non-Blondes to be completely hysterical. The fast pace of the games kept the energy high, and if a scene wasn’t working for you, odds were you’d be watching a different one in twenty seconds or so. The audience was totally bought-in as well, shouting out suggestions that ranged from basically normal to completely bizarre.
My favorite games were the ones that had one performer exit the room and then guess the circumstances of the sketch, which the audience had come up with while they were outside. The energy, already high, peaked when the scenario was especially ridiculous or unfair: for example, trying to make a performer understand that their character was late to work due to an invasion of leprechauns; or reporters at a press conference trying to get an embattled politician to utter the phrase, “it was a rounding error.” (“Could you give us some attributes of a circle?” begged one reporter. “Mr. Mayor, are you familiar with the films of Edward Norton?”)
To say the show went fast is an understatement; I can’t remember the last time in my conscious life that ninety minutes flew by so briskly. Afterward, we enjoyed some very good West Coast IPA (brewed in honor of this month’s Yes, Ann Improv Festival) and noshed on wings and a chopped cheese sandwich from the excellent Westside Biscuit food truck, an offshoot of Side Biscuit. It was a great night out.
The Non-Blondes have been holding down Friday nights at Hear.Say since November 2024, but the venue has developed a lively programming calendar that includes a litany of improv acts, stand-up comedy, and live music throughout the week. It’s a welcome nightspot for this stretch of town along the Stadium/Maple corridor, which tends to go to sleep early (Taco Bell, Little Caesar’s, and Zal Gaz Grotto excepted). The only thing we regretted was not checking it out earlier. We will be back.