Highlight: The Scrimshaw Show

with Ari Hoptman; New Year's Eve Special

A A A Comments (0) By Quinton Skinner Wednesday, Dec 29 2004

Courtesy of the Scrimshaw Brothers

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With much of the theater scene pretty much dormant until after the New Year (save for, shiver all together now, holiday shows), it's time to regroup until the next slate of options. One bright spot is offered by Joshua and Joseph Scrimshaw, sketch comedy and improv lunatics, who offer up this New Year's Eve version of their ongoing productions at Bryant-Lake Bowl. Along for the ride is screwball intellectual-comic-playwright-actor Ari Hoptman, music by Marc Doty, and a guest turn by DC Comics artist Chris Jones. The second show of the night will run straight into the New Year, and theatergoers will be plied with party favors and a glass of Champagne at the door. It's been a hell of a year, with politics and war clouding the horizon like a bad spell of industrial pollution, and some smart, knowing comedy might be a good way to cast off all the bad juju and start fresh. The Scrimshaws' manic absurdity and renowned proclivity for doing just about anything to make an audience laugh might be the ticket for this oddest of holidays. First we invent an arbitrary way of measuring time, then use an artificial division within the system as an excuse to get out of our minds. Then we embark on the annual morning of regret, promising ourselves that next year will be different. Well, maybe it will be, and maybe it won't.