It takes gumption to try to reinterpret improvisational theater on the stomping grounds of the city that gave birth to it. But that is precisely what Studio Z’s “The Ticket, ” a long-form structured improvisation blending multimedia and Commedia dell’arte, attempts to do using five performers and a battery of digital effects. Commedia dell’arte, a sixteenth-century Italian improvisational style of theater, demands of its practitioners that they create dialogue around loosely plotted scenarios involving recognizable stock characters. With an insensitive cop, elitist yuppie and a slimy lawyer, to name just a few of its characters, “The Ticket” is certainly chock-full of twenty-first-century types. But for an improv piece whose narrative involves little more than a traffic ticket, a bike messenger and a required court appearance, the affair feels heavily scripted with unfunny plot points which must be connected in order for the performance to incorporate its elaborately-designed digital backdrop. As such, the actors in “The Ticket” are mostly relegated to being naturalistic interpreters of a text rather than improvisational creators of one. And if you think that’s unfortunate, imagine witnessing them getting upstaged by a digital projection of Mayor Daley. (Fabrizio O. Almeida)
Chicago Cultural Center Studio Theater, 77 E. Randolph Street, (312)543-7920. Sat 2pm & 8pm/Sun 2pm. $7-$10. Through Aug 28
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