Theatre Preview: Winnipeg Jewish Theatre kicks off something funny with "Tribefest"

.... what ensued was magic and hilarity. As always, this is improv, so your results may vary - but National Theatre of the World were in fine form walking in Mamet's shoes on Wednesday

—Joff Schmidt, CBC Theatre Reviewer

So here's a dilemma -- you're a theatre company whose mandate is to produce Jewish (or at the very least, "Jew-ish") theatre... and you want to be part of a January theatre festival... but the existing theatre festival is focused on a playwright who's not Jewish. What do you do?

If you're Winnipeg Jewish Theatre, you start your own festival.

Hence, the cheekily-named "Tribefest" - which kicked off its first part Wednesday night, and continues on with another round of theatre events in February.

Part two starts on February 9 with a pay-what-you-can panel discussion exploring the question, "What is Jewish theatre?"

The next night features readings of new plays by locals Bruce Sarbit and Ginny Collins (admission is free). And the festival wraps up on Feb. 11 with another pay-what-you-can event, Neurotica: An Evening of Short Plays based on the themes of "Something Jewish" and "Something Eros."

As for this week, Tribefest kicks off with Impromptu Splendour, the show from the also-cheekily-named National Theatre of the World, a Toronto comedy troupe whose core members are Ron Pederson (who was on MadTV for three seasons) and Second City alumni Naomi Snieckus and Matt Baram.

NTOW's specialty is play-length improv. So this week, in a clever nod to the Master Playwright Festival, they'll improvise a play in the style of a different writer each show -- Harold Pinter (Jan. 26), Woody Allen (Jan. 27), and Neil Simon (Jan. 29).

But they kicked off Tribefest in style on Wednesday night with a nod to one of contemporary theatre's most popular playwrights - famed potty-mouth David Mamet (known for plays like Glengarry Glen Ross, American Buffalo, and Speed-the-Plow).

After a short "getting to know you" audience warm-up from Snieckus, who probed the small but responsive crowd on Winnipeg (what do we hate? transit, traffic circles... what are we excited about? Jets, IKEA... what do we fear?  getting stabbed downtown...), the trio settled on the title for their Mamet-inspired masterpiece: "Useless Roundabouts."

And from there, what ensued was magic and hilarity. As always, this is improv, so your results may vary - but NTOW were in fine form walking in Mamet's shoes on Wednesday. Their hour-long improvised play began a bit slowly - but once it warmed up, laughs came fast and furious. The pre-show audience chat was smoothly and smartly incorporated, with loving digs at our airport, transit, and yes, IKEA.

And here's what separates good improvisers from great ones - far from stopping at delivering good jokes (and they did plenty of that in the story of an airport executive, his estranged wife, and the sad-sack loser who comes between them), this trio crafts an actual play - with themes, characters, and a compelling enough plot structure that you stay with them not just for the gags, but because you're genuinely engaged in the story they're telling.

I'd be curious to see how they handle other playwrights, but they grabbed onto Mamet's style beautifully -- incomplete sentences, overlapping dialogue, naughty words and all.

It makes me a bit sad that you'll never get to see "Useless Roundabouts." But given the skill on display on Wednesday night, I'd recommend going to see what NTOW does on the nights to come.

National Theatre of the World's Impromptu Splendour runs as part of WJT's Tribefest until Jan. 29. More info here.