The desire to do something new with the form of sketch comedy is admirable. There's a whole lot of it onstage in Chicago, and anything that makes a show stand out from the pack is worth a shot. The sketch comedy group Robot Vs. Dinosaur, in its production of "The Greatest Stories Never Told...TOLD!," offers some interesting subject matter and an inventive structure. Unfortunately, the show never delivers enough laughs to live up to the innovations.
The production's sketches explore fractured versions of familiar stories. These include fairy tales, Western tall tales and Hemingway-style adventure stories. Three of the stories are divided into pieces and woven through the play. Some of the ideas for the sketches are very clever—a deconstruction of a stereotypical general's rallying of his troops to glory, a very adult look at Paul Bunyan's peculiar problems, a soldier home from war who increasingly unnerves his adoring family, a self-absorbed scientist using a time machine to explain to his daughter when a joke based on tragedy is "too soon." However, the sketches simply are not as funny as their inventive premises would suggest, and without a constant stream of laughs, it's hard for even an inventive structure to keep the audience's interest.
The blame for this can be shared. The writing often fails to mine the humor from the situations, often relying on stock gags. The performers, while energetic, only rarely succeed in creating interesting characterizations, often falling back on stereotypes. Robot Vs. Dinosaur is ambitious in what it wants to do with sketch comedy, and hopefully in its next show it will live up to that ambition.
Reviewed by Centerstage!
Map it