What a wonderful idea. How ripe for spoofing are the films (and, to a lesser extent, the teleplays) of that great director, Alfred Hitchcock. Filled with breathy blondes, suave leading men, quirky villains, and ubiquitous Bernard Herrmann music, how could an improv company go wrong mining such comedic riches? Throw in the assorted neuroses, psychoses, and phobias that are part and parcel of Hitchcock’s oeuvre, and you can’t go wrong.
Or at least so it would seem.
The Free Associates have gained a reputation around town for their energetic, inspired spoofs of popular culture. Their modus operandi is simple: take audience suggestions and then create a piece based on them, improvising, mugging, and generally good naturedly hustling for laughs, however base those laughs may be. In the past, they’ve parodied the Brontes, Dark Shadows, and ER.
And now, they’ve turned to Hitchcock, the master film director, who knew that the most frightening aspects of life often lurked beneath the most mundane. The show could have been funny, but instead the Free Associates here offer only the most tepid humor, never really capitalizing on Hitchcock’s suitcase full of tricks. Relying on silly accents, hysteria, and juvenile hijinks (such as compulsive fainting and silly smoking) the Free Associates never approach the wit or over-the-top zaniness such subject matter might have inspired. The company never takes things far enough, to make them over the top enough, to really inspire attention and real laughter. Granted, the performances here are good: Susan Gaspar, in the lead on the night I saw the show, was particularly on target: playing the 1950s Hitchcock heroine style with perfection.
It doesn’t help that the Royal George cabaret space in which this spoof is performed is nothing short of tortuous (thank God the show was only a little over an hour!). The seats are designed to create back pain and the long narrow space has horrible sight lines. Unless you’re at the very front, expect most of the stage to be blocked. The physical space alone makes the $20 one might shell out for this show a rip-off.
But it’s not just the space that makes Alfred Hitchcock Resents not worth seeing…it’s the show itself, which just ain’t funny. The Free Associates need to work on sharpening their humor beyond lowest common denominator pap. Lord knows Alfred Hitchcock has given them enough to work with. I mean, my God, didn’t they even think to have a silly cameo of the director moving through the proceedings?