Hyprov Reviews: Improv and Hypnotism, With an Audience

If there are two more chilling words in the theatrical lexicon than “audience participation,” I don’t know what they are.

Coming in a distant second: “jukebox musical.”

“Hyprov” — the title suggests one of those much-advertised drugs whose side effects leave you quailing, and usually include potential death — may represent a peak moment, to use a faintly tired expression, or an apotheosis, to use a faintly pretentious one, of the increasingly popular trend of involving the spectators in the show. (Let me reconsider: Coming in that distant second place should be “immersive theater.”)

Hyprov Reviews: Improv Under Hypnosis

Daryl Roth Theatre, 101 E. 15th St., New York

$55-$95, 212–239–6200, closes Oct. 30

Subtitled “Improv Under Hypnosis,” the production, created by Asad Mecci (the hypnotist), Colin Mochrie (the improv specialist, and a veteran of the improv-based show “Whose Line Is It Anyway?”), and Jeff Andrews (a producer, marketer, and collaborator of Mr. Mochrie’s), will test the tastes of New York audiences for potential humiliation in front of hundreds.

Judging by the performance I caught, that thirst for a moment in the spotlight — public mortification be damned! — is virtually insatiable. When the call came for volunteers to participate in this novel theatrical experiment, a small stampede occurred. (Was on aisle; foot squashed.)

Those who made it past the ramparts — only 20 are allowed — assembled along a banquette on a set that recalls the gleaming habitats of the popular television competition shows that have swamped the airwaves in the past 20 years. Honors to the designer Jo Winiarski, who has created a sleek environment that could easily be transposed to a television studio — where the show almost seems destined to arrive.

Mr. Mecci, clad in casual black, in contrast to Mr. Mochrie’s more formal black, proceeds to winnow down the volunteers to a small handful. Using a voice in a smooth dark register to put the assembled company at its ease (under stage lights, facing hundreds? — never mind), Mr. Mecci, with an auctioneer’s rapid delivery and long experience with hypnosis, reduces all to a state of somnolence. He is assisted by trance-inducing music from the gifted and versatile composer and pop star Rufus Wainwright: Philip Glass-like piano arpeggios, tinkling chimes, humming.

Mr. Mecci quickly eliminates the less-susceptible, and from there Mr. Mochrie mostly takes the reins. Given the built-in requirements of improvisational theater, each performance will be different. Mr. Mecci and Mr. Mochrie currently have a menu of about a dozen different improvisations to choose from, according to press materials; each performance involves four or five.

The final participants at the show I saw were suspiciously young and attractive, and, in their own ways, disarmingly talented at what is surely not a natural endeavor: performing semiconsciously without a net.

The offerings included a solo dance display from someone who clearly and thankfully was not likely to break a hip; in fact he seemed to have come straight from a yoga studio, and flung his Nike-clad feet into the air as if being filmed for a TikTok video.

The main improv performance was a “radio show,” a clever parody of film noir in which Mr. Mochrie led two of the “hyprovisers,” as they are called, through their paces with formidably dry humor.

Mr. Mochrie, with a slightly sinister but still audience-engaging presence, played a central role, with a volunteer portraying the rest of the characters, under his suggestion. Her talents would suggest that a career under hypnosis might be a profitable path. The third member of the cast provided the sound effects, or rather the wrong effects (as dictated by Mr. Mochrie), a source of reliably goofy humor. There was also a funny routine about a hybrid animal, with audience members shouting out suggestions; the creature in question ended up being a giraffe crossed with a hippopotamus.

The participants slid so smoothly into their roles that I began to wonder if they were what is known as plants (people pre-selected to be reliable performers, and not randomly chosen audience members). But then I reflected that a New York theater audience would be likely to include aspiring performers with natural experience in improv, if not under these peculiar conditions.

“Hyprov,” crisply directed by Stan Zimmerman, a television veteran whose credits range from “The Golden Girls” to “Gilmore Girls,” has toured extensively and been seen at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. It’s catnip for those who relish the spontaneity and informality that this show and similar ones involve. For those who prefer not to bite their fingernails to the quick at the prospect of people embarrassing themselves in public, it would perhaps be better to steer clear.

This Hyprov Review is Originally Published on wsj.com.