I love a good Sunday afternoon date. Joe won tickets to see “Whirled New Tonight” at the Temple Theater through the Des Moines Performing Arts e-newsletter, and we were able to send Emmett to a babysitting co-op house, so it was a fun and nearly free afternoon of entertainment. We grabbed pizza and salad at Centro next door afterward.
I’m kind of a snob about comedy (my taste is toward more witty than slapstick humor) and I genuinely laughed at this. When you walk in, the audience is asked to clip newspaper stories from the day’s papers and pin them to a bulletin board. The first half is improv, based on the headlines.
The second half, they ask the audience to raise their hands and ask questions. The questions themselves were painfully awkward (“Should we have a second child?” “What should you do if your parents clearly have a favorite? – asked by a 17 year old who was sitting between her sister and parents; “What if you feel like the third wheel when you hang out with your boyfriend and his best friend?”) but the improv was even funnier than the news-related stuff.
Sunday was the last day of the Whirled News residency in Des Moines (at least for now), but the performance is based out of the iO Chicago Theater, so my Windy City readers can catch it anytime.
