Courtesy of Impro Theatre

Shakespeare Unscripted @ Pasadena Playhouse

Beware LA audiences; Impro Theatre has been unleashed – lock up your funny bone or risk it being terminally tickled.

Bad improv is the gristle in any theatrical feast, good improv can be the tastiest treat served up at Saint Genesius’ Bar-B-Que, and Impro Theatre’s “Shakespeare Unscripted” will have you craving seconds.

Shakespeare Unscripted” is one of nine performance styles Impro Theatre offers up (“Jane Austin Unscripted”, “Sondheim Unscripted”, and “Twilight Zone Unscripted” being some of the others).

Improvising Shakespeare, and doing it so well, is no small feat.

Impro Theatre presented the audience a “Midsummer Night’s Dream” by way of Flaubert’s “The Legend of Saint Julian the Hospitaller” which was full of star-crossed lovers, cross dressing Scots and magical forest sprites.

The cast, Lisa Fredrickson, Kelly Holden-Bashar, Edi Patterson, Nick Massouh, Stephen Kearin, Dan O’Connor and Paul Rogan, includes alumni from the much beloved Tolkien parody “Fellowship”. They lay on the snickers and chortles thick while zinging out the faux Bard bon mots:

“Like a light house that seeks a ship,

Let me crash upon your shore.”

In “Macbeth”, ol’ Will described life as a “tale told by an idiot.”

Well presently in Pasadena, thanks to Impro Theatre, that tale is being told by a whole lot of idiots and they’re really, really funny.