Don't Read the Personals, Watch Them!

By Suzy Evans in Arts & Entertainment on Apr 2, 2009 9:10PM

Reading personal ads may be considered desperate, but Bruised Orange Theater Company isn’t looking for a one-night stand. “The depth of loneliness is getting larger and larger, and when you wrestle with that you either become very very depressed or you laugh at it,” said Mark Spence, director of I Saw You a show taken entirely from the Chicago Reader’s personal ads. “We choose to laugh at it.”

The product of boredom sitting in traffic, I Saw You is a part-scripted, part-improv comedy show that includes everything from the Reader’s semi-innocent “I Saw You” section to the risque “X-Matches.” Bruised Orange has been performing the show for about three years and it became a weekly engagement about a year and a half ago. Tuesday marked the last weekly performance at The Spot, where the show had been for over a year, and in April, performances are every Wednesday at Town Hall Pub in Lakeview.

While there is no substantial plot, the show kept us entertained for its hour-long duration. Some ads are undeniably funnier than others, but all three actors maximized the hilarity. The words are straight from the Reader, and the improv comes in the interpretation. (For example, one of the actors performed an ad on his knees because it was written by self-proclaimed “Little Man. Big Dick.”) Spence called the show “very Chicago-friendly,” but noted that he had to be careful about classifying the show as improv because the actors do read the text.

The actors receive new material an hour before the show, but when we saw the performance, the actors seemed to know some of the pieces by heart. (The script fell off the podium once, and the performer kept going without picking it up.) Some of the pieces have endured throughout the show's run. We know this because the "I Saw You" portion of the Reader lists the interaction date. Spence said they never perform the same show twice because he constantly puts recent ads in the line-up, and the actors also rotate among a group of eight. And for those ads that just aren’t as funny as the others, Spence claims the show is in a bar for reason other than the fact that this ensures children won’t attend: “The show just works better when people are drinking." However, we can say from experience that the show works pretty well sober too. Just don’t bring your parents.

I Saw You is on Wednesdays at 8 pm at the Town Hall Pub. Entrance is $5. Check out the website for additional dates.

Photo by Cassandra Stadnickiof of Ann Sonneville in I Saw You.