Lauren Katz is working under the hood of her car. John Lehr has his tanning foil out and he’s sunning himself, working on his moles. He waves to Mrs. Johnson, the lady next door, who yodels in reply, “Just goin’ inside. Got m’sausages. See ya laaater!” Turning back to Katz, Lehr finds her ogling the local divorcee as she saunters down the street. “That’s a nine and a half,” she tells Lehr as she swigs iced tea from a German liter glass. “You’re gonna be a nine and a half some day.” To which Lehr replies appreciatively, “I am one lucky little, little baby girl.”
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This is disconcerting. And not just because Katz and Lehr are playing against gender–they seem to do that every chance they get. What’s disconcerting is the complexity of the information presented here–here being a completely improvised set performed last winter before a live audience in New York. The homey little detail of the sausages. The nasty hint of sexual subjugation. The fact that I know exactly what the car, the foil, Mrs. Johnson, and the German liter glass look like, even though they’re all pure air.
This is Slotnick Katz & Lehr: three former Chicago actors who’ve teamed up to perform a style of improvisation where nothing ever stops–at least not while they’re onstage. Instead, the elements–characters, story lines, moles–slip into one another, proliferating, resonating, and bouncing off each other until the improvisers have created something rich and allusive, startling, funny, unpremeditated, and about an hour long.
