Wirelessless
Joe Hingelberg and Travis Pelto rain down characters onto the Go Comedy! stage in the improv duo’s original production Wirelessless. Written by Pelto and Hingelberg with direction by Bryan Lark, this late-night Thursday offering takes away the web as we’ve come to know it, and in its place follows the smaller, conspicuously tighter web of one peculiar technology-addicted society.
Unrestrained wireless internet access is what put Webbland on the map, so when the signal goes down for four consecutive days, the city finds itself in the throes of fiscal and identity crises. The risible mayor and a team of experts scrambles to reconnect with the manned Webbland satellite, a slight but curious mystery of lost and found web access that serves as the backbone of the plot. However, the meat of the play is found in the larger effects on the town and its people: the city’s downtown tollbooth suffers decreasing traffic and revenues, stores are all but abandoned, and disillusioned residents grumble about defecting to the rival community of Neighborton. Hingelberg and Pelto portray at least a dozen characters each, a revolving door of diverse personalities, opinions, and motives hardly limited to the crisis at hand. The scenes hop capriciously from place to place, aided by Lark and Peter Jacokes’s thrumming sound design (including great contributions by Jaws That Bite). But here, pausing is more exception than rule: character transitions are frequently instantaneous, often specified by a single accessory, which banishes mere two-person scenes in favor of filling each locale with activity and humorous content.
With the communications blackout as a common tether, the writing takes off in all directions, delivering crazed scenarios and impeccable punchlines whose variability makes the show’s trajectory a constant surprise. Although the many tangential bits have stand-alone power, the show folds them into its careful framework by associations and six-degrees–style links bridging scenes and people. Following individuals from one encounter to another gives this slingshot journey a great linear course, while ever-so-slyly reminding the viewer of the original meaning of “connection.” Most impressively, the multifaceted community that results expands with a satisfying geometry, rounding out the place and its populace by increasingly interesting and detailed means. Michelle LeRoy’s lighting scheme not only serves up a number of unique-feeling locales in a generally blank space, but pulls off split-screen and aside effects that are a major boon to the complex and fast-moving execution.
The show’s success resides in fine teamwork from a pair of performers who feed into each other’s comic strengths and styles. Lively wit Pelto has a batty quip always at the ready, although his characters lean on vocal modulation and accent work to compensate for their common neutral carriage. Conversely, Hingelberg thoroughly sinks into his stable of personas, culminating in an amazing-amusing showcase plainly orchestrated to exhibit his considerable morphing skill. Well partnered to the energetic performances are the show's plethora of devices and innovative tricks, the best of which is also the farthest flung — a collection of sight gags and surprises too good to spoil with further delineation.
Running at a crisp hour, Wirelessless takes a nugget of an anecdote and marvelously fleshes out an entire municipality. Dynamically thwarting expectations of a two-man show, Lark, Hingelberg, Pelto, and a vital design team make for a winning combination, delivering a production that’s both an exercise in form and a thoroughly entertaining comic endeavor.
March 8, 2012