Comedy
Steve Sims and Lee White are Crumb.
Catch 23 Tournament of Wonders
BY Sean Davidson March 25, 2008 19:03
When Steve Sims and Lee White got stuck with “eating turkey” as a premise, they didn’t look happy. It was Saturday, the last night of the Tournament of Wonders improv festival, and the duo better known as Crumb were looking to hang a scene on what someone had done the previous day.
In the crapshoot of audience shout-outs, they somehow got stuck with the dead-ender, “I drank and ate some turkey.”
You could see it in their faces. That half-concealed look that says, Really? That’s all you’re giving me? I mean, dude, I know it was a holiday, but...
So they made something up about a beer store. Not the best work of the night but some other scenes had already scored big with the crowd and judges and — after a show-stopping surpriser about Canadian politics, of all things — the Winnipeg duo took home their second ToW championship.
Not that they actually “took” anything except bragging rights. The severed head of a stuffed unicorn that serves as the big prize at ToW “is actually very shitty” said host Kurt Smeaton at one point, “and it even stays here.”
“I don’t want to take it with me,” said Sims, eyeing it warily, backstage after the show. Besides, it would just be one more thing to pack as he and White head off to other dates in Berlin, Switzerland and Austria.
They’ve been together as Crumb for 11 years and share a disdain for the “conventions of improv,” says Sims — such as scenes that were, ahem, supposed to be set “in the past” but ended up being about last Friday at a beer store. (The other two troupes did bits about the Depression and feudal Japan.)
“The reason we love improv is it’s not the same thing every night,” he says.
And it shows. Their scenes on Saturday were uniquely odd, and made little use of improv gimmicks or fall-backs. Handed the premise “purple dinosaur” early in the show, they crafted a tender scene between a husband and wife about the immigrant experience of thunder lizards in Canada.
They also trust each other enough to let a scene, or even a silence, stretch past the point that would make many performers uncomfortable.
“Any moment when I don’t know what’s going to happen next, Steve has something,” says Lee.
“And I’m just going to assume I know what he’s doing,” Sims answers.
The Tournament of Wonders isn’t due back until next year but in the meantime organizers are again putting on regular Monday night match-ups at Clinton’s Tavern. The weekly, like the Tournament of Wonders, was on hiatus last year but is back in business and this week pits Becky Johnson and Graham Wagner (a.k.a. Iron Cobra) against the teams of Naomi Sneikus and Matt Baram; and Smeaton and Kayla Lorette.
Best bets:
Colors of Comedy, the show so nice they did it thrice, returns for its third go-round of multi-ethnic yuks at the Tranzac Club. Comics on the bill include Nile Seguin, Arthur Simeon and Linda Ellis. Mar 29, 8:30 and 10pm. $12. 292 Brunswick.
625 Church St, 6th Floor, Toronto M4Y 2G1
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