REVIEWS

• Get Happy [Now Magazine], 23Oct08
• Best of Toronto (Now Magazine), 28Oct04
• Improv Meets Sketch (Toronto Star), 13May04
• Now Magazine Cover Story, 14Aug03
• Now Magazines' Top 10 Comedy Shows of 2002, 26Dec02
• Now Magazine Best of Toronto, 31Oct02
• Now Magazine Feature, 30May02
• Now Magazine, Stage Scenes, 30Jan02
• Toronto Star, 21Nov01
• Now Magazine Comedy Q and A, 11Oct01
• Improv Review, New York, 09June01
• Time Out New York, 19Apr01
• Orlando Sentinel, 21Feb01
• e-review, Peterborough, 1999
• Peterborough Examiner, 09Sep98

Improv troupe Slap Happy marked their 10th anniversary by reuniting for two Saturdays at the Bad Dog Theatre. We caught the final one last weekend. Of course the talented quartet – Kerry Griffin, Sandy Jobin-Bevans, Dave Pearce and Tabetha Wells provided some of the funniest comedy of the year. Like pro tennis players, they can lob back anything tossed at them, and even return a smash. Unlike sketch troupes rehashing old material, improv performers keep everything fresh.

What’s revealing is how much they’ve improved as actors. Wells and Pearce especially aren’t afraid to take on an accent or a physical tic to establish character. I’ll never forget Pearce’s Rita MacNeil as a French lesbian.

Jobin-Bevans, meanwhile, broke out into song whenever he could, raising the bar for the others. May you guys reunite often, and not after another 10 years.

It'd be worth the $20 or $40 gamble to see Slap Happy's whimsical, imaginative and intelligent crew (Dave Pearce, Kerry Griffin, Tabetha Wells and Sandy Jobin-Bevans) try to fight City Hall on your behalf. Over the years, at international comedy festivals and in their monthly showcase at Bad Dog Theatre, the multiple Canadian Comedy Award winners have proven they can get out of any tight spot with barely a scratch on that bumper. Order in the court? Not likely. (October 28, 2004)

Check out a complete list of the Best of the Toronto Stage scene!

It may be billed as a competition, but no one has decided how to choose a winner.

The event is said to be "One night only!" but runs over three evenings.

And then there are the mismatched players.

Could this be some sort of a comedy come-on? Of course it is.

Funny and inventive sketch quartet The Imponderables, which recently enjoyed an extended run at the Second City Mainstage, is facing off against the remarkably disciplined improv quartet Slap Happy at the Tim Sims Playhouse starting tonight.

But according to Slap Happy's Dave Pearce, he won't be engaging in any sketch comedy, and The Imponderables won't be trying their hand at improv. So the real competition will be in who can get the best laughs as each quartet does what they do best.

"We could decide it with a fistfight," he says over the phone earlier this week. "Or maybe we'll just let the audience vote."

To an outsider, it seems a bit late to be deciding the evening's format. "But that's the advantage of improv," Pearce replies. "We work pretty quickly once we get together and bounce some ideas around."

The group — whose other members are Tabetha Wells, Kerry Griffin and Sandy Jobin-Bevans — gets together "about once a month" to perform, Pearce says. "It helps us to stay sharp. Besides, we're also friends and hang out with each other."

DJ Fase will provide an all-vinyl soundtrack tonight and tomorrow, while Saturday's music duties will be filled by virtuoso keyboardist Matt Reid. One other Saturday-night variation will be Jobin-Bevans' absence, since he's currently performing in Second City's Mainstage show.

Slap Happy gets its regular workout at the Danforth's Bad Dog Theatre, which grew out of the former Theatresports and is artistically directed by Slap Happy member Griffin.

Coming up next for the two-time winners of the Canadian Comedy Award is a trip to the Los Angeles Improv Comedy Festival on June 8 and, hopefully, a gig at the improv-based Del Close Marathon in New York City in July.

Long-form improv troupe Slap Happy (Dave Pearce, Sandy Jobin-Bevans, Tabetha Wells and Kerry Griffin) out-class almost every other troupe in town with their smart (these guys have book-learnin'), character-driven shows. Their Clinton's gig coincided with the introduction of a new format called the Narratron (one day, someone's gonna write a thesis about its narrative sophistication), and resulted in a show full of gut-bustingly funny scenes. An improv troupe's only as good as its weakest member. Slap Happy has no weakest link.

For the full list of top 10 shows, follow the link!

Individually, Dave Pearce, Sandy Jobin-Bevans, Kerry Griffin and Tabetha Wells are funny performers. But put them on a stage together, shout out a premise and within a few minutes your stomach will be hurting. In a good way. The troupe's long-form improv takes lots of circuitous routes, but after 40 minutes or so they always drive the car smoothly into the driveway in shows that are consistently intelligent and imaginative.

For a full list of the best of Toronto's Arts Scene in 2002, click here!

SLAP HAPPY DAYS

Caught long-form improv troupe Slap Happy's Wednesday set at Clinton's Tavern, their last gig there before heading south to the Foolfest! Orlando Comedy Festival February 19 to 25 and their mainstage appearance at the ultra-prestigious Chicago Improv Fest in early April.

Their set began with a couple about to have a baby, took a surreal detour examining the lives of the Carradine brothers and entered a strange narrative portal that told us about a doctor's private compromises, then headed back to the baby plot. Slap Happy (Dave Pearce, Sandy Jobin-Bevans, Tabetha Wells and Kerry Griffin) are easily one of the smartest and funniest outfits in town, of whatever genre. Their technique of "character slapping" -- sending characters out of a scene by slapping them, hence the name -- has been much imitated. Last week they tried out a new format called Narratron, where a character in a scene suddenly steps forward, says something like "...and that's when I realized... " and goes off on a tangent, which gives us access to their past and adds depth and texture to the narrative.

The troupe doesn't dumb down the material. Jobin-Bevans (late of Second City) even mentioned the word "hubris" in one of his lines. They have absolute trust in each other and in the sophistication of their audience. They're up for anything, unafraid to point out any inconsistencies that arise. And let's not forget the efforts of musician Matt Reid, crucial when one or two of them break into song to add an extra gut-busting underscoring to a scene.

Before heading south, Slap Happy play February 10 at the Rivoli, where they hope to start up a monthly gig beginning in April. Can't wait.

Mention the word improvisation to many comedy fans and you'll often get a cringe in response because, when handled by amateurs, it can be a turnoff of the first order.

The Slap Happy Hour, a new monthly comedy variety show featuring a mix of long-form improv (described as "the difference between a snack and a real meal"), courtesy of 2001 Canadian Comedy Award nominees Slap Happy, plus offbeat videos and special guests, is anything but. In April, New York's Time Out magazine raved that Slap Happy has "joined the shortlist of Canadian comedy greats," including John Candy and Martin Short.

Comprising quirky redhead Tabetha Wells, 30, of the Second City Touring Co., the lanky Dave Pearce, 34, of Supertown Challenge and Co-Ed Prison Sluts; Kerry Griffin, 31, fave of commercial casting agents (recently as the Goodyear spokesman and in the heavily rotated UPS ad); along with tall and almost-too-handsome-for-comedy Sandy Jobin-Bevans, 28, who in August quit the Second City Mainstage, Slap Happy is clearly professional.

Professionalism is what separates Slap Happy from slap dash. The Hour (clocking in at 90-plus minutes) boasts a keen sense of show, so often lacking in today's alternative comedy scene rife with in-jokes and self-indulgent antics.

Slap Happy clearly cares about its crowd. As proof, if offered up a smorgasbord of silliness in last month's performance that gave us, along with the now-ubiquitous Cipro references, a variety of both smart and screwy video shorts, the best of which was The Anniversary, starring Wells as a love-obsessed wife and Jobin-Bevans (actually, it was Kerry, ed) as a victim of a wrong marital decision.

(ed's note: this is where Ms. Spevack reviews our October guests, The Gentlemen Callers and plugs November's guest, Kristeen Von Hagen...she says very nice things, and deservedly so, but my fingers hurt from typing this out)

Slap Happy takes what in improv lingo is called the "tag out" (entering the scene by touching another performer, thereby removing him/her temporarily from the action and altering the story line either by a change of character or a detour in plot) to another level. Here, swift slaps move the action along. Upon taking the house's suggestion of "rainbow", the troupe (minus Jobin-Bevans who was working out of town) last month proceeded to weave an intricate web of plot and characters into a riotous riches-to-rags morality play, moving backward (and sometimes sideways) through time.

Horse whisperers, leprechauns, psychiatrists, loans officers and loads of Irish-style blarney exalted mixed metaphors and pointless parables that miraculously resolved the issue of whether or not the rainbow ends in a pot of gold or gully of despair.

Suffice it to say that the sizable crowd was not despairing. Slap Happy's Hour (and a half) is a pot of gold.

What's the difference between Slap Happy and just plain happy?
Bruises, pharmaceuticals and remembering your spirit.
Is Tabetha discriminated against because she's the only woman?
We prefer the term "harassed" (Tabetha sighs).
If there were a Slap Happy beer, what would your slogan be?
"Severed-finger-free since March."
What is Margaret Atwood's best novel?
The Handmaid's Tale is a fascinating allegory regarding a woman's biological imperative for reproduction. Atwood strips away the veneers of civilization and society to reveal the precarious control of women in North America over their bodies.
Tofurky: verdict?
Nolo contendere.
What does Ikea mean in Swedish?
"We launder Nazi gold." The Swiss haven't cornered the market on that.
Why isn't there a Novemberfest?
The Germans were busy in Poland after October.

Wedged between the shows of shortform masters Boom Chicago and Whose Line Is It Anyway on opening night, the producers of the Chicago Improv Festival chose to slip in a little Canadian longform to give the audience a taste of something a bit more sophisticated than your standard game-prov fare. And a wise choice it was as this Toronto based trio weaved a wonderfully comic science fiction melodrama in their 45 minute set.

Slap Happy uses a structure they call "Character Slap" in which one character from a scene remains in the ensuing one. This format helps to move the story forward quickly, and makes scene changes that are more easily digested by the audience, as the first three minutes of each scene doesn't need to be spent reminding the audience who the characters are.

The creation of the play presented on this night reminded me of watching children playing with blocks – each scene carefully balanced on the scene before, and resulting in a big, funny-looking structure that could fall down with one wayward gust, but doesn't. From only the suggestion of "Aerobar", they fashioned a story where Dave Pearce's character suffers from a rare skin loss disease that is treated with massive doses of chocolate. This cure turns into a curse, as Mr. Pearce's character becomes a chocolate consuming, zombie-making monster, leaving Tabetha Wells and Kerry Griffin to battle him in true Buck Rogers fashion.

The players are very comfortable with each other, and their format, making for smooth transitions, and allowing for a lot of creativity within the structure (at one point, we were treated to Mr. Pearce's song "Would You Love a Chocolate Man"). At one point, Ms. Wells character made a reference to the number of pickup lines she'd heard in the past, and Mr. Pearce and Mr. Griffin picked up on the game right away and did a quick fire series of flashback scenes showing those occasions. Comparisons to Slotnick, Katz & Lehr may be inevitable as this group has a similar composition and format to that trio. I'm looking forward to seeing Slap Happy at CIF 7 in three years (Slotnik, Katz & Lehr have been together 3 years longer) to see where they take their work.

Time Out New York, 19/4/01

What's funny from Canada? John Candy was, Martin Short is, and now Slap Happy, the Fringe vets from Toronto, appear with New York's own all-female improv troupe and join the, er...short list.

Orlando Sentinel, 21/2/2001

Somebody's yelling "COMEDY" in the crowded theater at Sak all week. And if Wednesday's opening-night audiences were any indication, the first Foolfest comedy festival could be the first of many. Acts doing music, sketch comedy and improv will riff their stuff at Sak Theatre throughout the weekend. Opening night showed just how good some of these ensembles from all over the country are -- and how the locals measure up in a showcase of North America's best and buffooniest.

The best of the improv groups was saved for the last show Wednesday. Canada's Slap Happy Improv kicked off its act with a few too many comic videos, then took the audience's suggested "life with pets" idea and delivered a consistently inventive and funny tag-team act that took us into the life of a CPA who is being kept as a guy's pet, with all the indignities (he gets "fixed") that come with that.

This is their third Fringe here and this troupe has it together! High energy, fast-paced, inventive improv that can get pretty outrageous if the audience is so inclined. It was this night and I and a few other audience members laughed until we nearly fell on the floor. A different show every night -- go there, help write it!

Phone the baby sitter, open your wallet, find a $5 bill and go to Peterborough's Second Annual Fringe Festival this week. If last night's opening performance was anything to go by, it will be worth it. Slap Happy Improv, a group of improvisation artists trained at Toronto's famous Second City Touring Company, used audience suggestions as the basis for skits developed on the spot. The results had the audience at the Gordon Best Theatre roaring with laughter. There were stories about camels learning to ski, about illicit love at the office, instantly contrived mixed genre fare where hints of pornography shared the stage with film noir, horror and westerns.

In each case the troupe - four men, and two women, asked the audience for topic ideas, and then worked off each other's wit to develop the story-. One of the funniest numbers was a "bilingual" piece about two boys who needed to smoke in order to cure their scabies. Saying they were doing it for their country, the actors launched into a skit that mixed high school French and English in phrases such as "Vous guys," "Qu'est ce que je smell?", and "Shut upez-vous." The big challenge in improv, beyond the implicit need for quick creative thought, is to keep the material this side of silly. Sometimes the Slap Happy group came a little close to the line, but every time rescued themselves with a sudden new character, a new twist in the story, or an unexpected punch line.

The cleverest piece was a musical based on a day in the life of an audience member named Charity. Upon questioning, this fourteen-year-old admitted to loving chemistry, said she had boiled an egg in class yesterday, and that she would be appearing in behind The Fall of Humpty Dumpty at the Fringe Festival on Saturday Using a guitar for accompaniment', the Slap Happy artists immediately launched into a sung skit that included an impersonation of Charity, the chemistry teacher, the egg, and a chicken called Clucky. There was character, plot development, theme, unity, all delivered on the spot: an impressive performance.

Members of the Slap Happy group are some of today's brightest young improv performers. Appearing with them at the Gordon Best theatre during the next four days will be guest members of the Second City troupe. And every night the show will be different, according to cues they get from their audiences.