By John Voket

RIDGEFIELD — Whose Line Is It Anyway? star Colin Mochrie has done his share of acting with a script, but he told The Newtown Bee in a recent interview that he is at his best when he is making the script up as he goes. Mochrie and his longtime improv foil Brad Sherwood will be running through a variety of impromptu routines when they hit the Ridgefield Playhouse stage on August 28 for two shows at 4 and 7:30 pm.

Billed as the duo’s Scared Scriptless tour, Mochrie said that, much like the countless live sets he has been doing for decades, these shows will tap the audience for situations and setups he and Sherwood will attempt to weave into at least semi-coherent interplay. He told The Bee that this unscripted equivalent of a trapeze act without a net remains creatively stimulating thanks to the amazing chemistry between himself and his equally zany partner.

“We’ve actually been friends longer than we’ve worked together, so it certainly helps to have that strong relationship,” Mochrie said. “I would say that I know 90% of the time where Brad is going to go in a scene, and when I don’t I have that trust to just follow him and see what happens. There certainly is a chemistry that’s been there from the beginning, and it’s grown stronger over the 18 years we’ve been doing this. But there’s no effort. There’s something so ultimately cool about going out on stage in front of a live audience who paid money to see a show that you don’t have — and know that it’s all going to work out.

“It’s the most calm I am in my life when we walk out onto that stage, just the two of us, ready to do two hours of God knows what,” he added. “It’s because we have that trust, I know what he can do — he knows what I can do, the same things make us laugh, it’s a great partnership.”

Even when using similar setups or suggested situations, Sherwood and Mochrie create a fresh and never-seen-before/never-to-be-seen-again routine that only exists in the moment it is being performed, ensuring that even attendees who have seen every Whose Line episode and any number of improv shows are always in for a brand new experience.

“It depends on the setup of the theater, the stage, we’re constantly trying to come up with new games,” he said, “and we’ll occasionally throw in something completely new to see how it works.”

That being said, Mochrie pointed out that he does play to certain strengths within the various improv games and scenes he is performing.

"There's little strengths we each have — I've always done well with the confused guy who doesn't know what's going on," Mochrie explained. "It's such a big part of my life that I've made it a big part of my improv life. Sometimes I feel like I'm the audience representative...the guy who's thrown into a situation and trying to make the best of it. I don't have a lot of other well-developed characters. But I do have the 'angry guy,' and the 'horny guy,' and they can each fit into any scene."

Unique Challenges

While most actors who do a lot of improv have played all the games and worked out many of the dozens of tried and true set-ups, even someone as hard working as Mochrie still comes across a situation that poses unique challenges.

"Recently I did a 'Dungeons and Dragons' long form improv, which was really challenging in that I had never played Dungeons and Dragons and I really didn't know anything about it," he said. "We were all assigned our characters — I was a cleric — and I was given a sheet with numbers on it and I had no idea what to do with it. So all I kept trying to do was make my cleric fly. I thought I must be able to fly, but apparently I could only jump two feet in any direction, that was it. But no matter what kind of suit your wearing in the scene, you're still working with your partners, listening to them and adding onto what they're building up to make the scene stronger."

Mochrie is an alumnus of Toronto’s famous Second City comedy troupe, and is widely considered to be one of the leading improvisers in the world.

"I think I was part of Second City for three years, starting in their touring company and then working on the main stage," Mochrie recalled. "That was a great learning experience because we got to improvise every night. After the main show we'd do an improv set just to try and develop material for the next show.

He said Second City was the place where he learned his performance weaknesses and strengths, and how to work on those weaknesses.

"I always felt uneasy talking to the audience. That was not my strong point," he said. "There are times during an improv set where you have to sort of stall while people got props and costumes ready for their next scene, so I would tell them that anytime they needed extra time, I would be happy to do an intro just so I could practice. That helped make it more easy talking to the audience, learning little tricks about how to get through that, and making up new bits that worked with the audience, and it eventually became something I really looked forward to."

After nine years as a regular on the British version of Whose Line Is It Anyway?, he became a regular on the Emmy-nominated American version hosted by Drew Carey, which ran for six years on ABC and three years on ABC Family. In 2011, the entire cast was reunited in Vegas for “Drew Carey’s Improv-A-Ganza.”

Mochrie has also appeared regularly in film and television, and was notably a cast member of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation’s classic news spoof This Hour Has 22 Minutes for two seasons. With his wife, Debra McGrath, he produced, wrote and starred in the CBC show Getting Along Famously.

A Very Brady Mochrie

Mochrie's live stage work has run the gamut from Shakespeare to playing a jittery Mike Brady in a musical spoof of The Brady Bunch.

“I think it ran for six weeks, and Andy Richter was in the original cast,” he recalled. “It was a recreation of three of the more famous episodes — I think the ‘Marcia, Marcia, Marcia’ episode was one. That was a lot of fun, and it certainly was not a faithful representation of The Brady Bunch. But I actually had a nice little perm for the role, which was fun. That’s when I had hair. So we’d start each evening with a half-hour improv set and then we’d go into the play.”

Sherwood is best known for his 13 seasons as a series regular on Whose Line. His credits also include The Drew Carey Show, Talk Soup, The Newz, Improv-a-ganza, The Green Screen Show, This Vs. That, The Dating Game, LA Law, and The Tonight Show.

While Mochrie said he had a few popular character types that he can always successfully employ in his improv, the world and situations ripe for improv humor are happening in real time. As a result, he said he keeps a finger on the pulse of current events in order to keep the routines fresh and topical — except for politics.

"We certainly keep up on everything that's current, especially in the entertainment industry and in politics," he said. "Although we do say at the top of the show that we don't do anything political in the scenes. And that's only because over the past ten years or so, you immediately split the audience, and that's not what we're there to do.

"There are plenty of great political comedians out there who can work on a joke and make it insightful and get a laugh," Mochrie added. "Whereas our stuff really doesn't add anything to the discussion. Our show is just silly and goofy, and a chance to forget about things for two hours. We're not going to be doing any hard-hitting political humor— maybe a few current event jokes, but that also depends on the suggestions we get and what ends up coming out of our mouths."

For more information or to purchase print-at-home tickets ($65) go to ridgefieldplayhouse.org or call the box office, 203-438-5795. Rescheduled from April 23, the performances will be outdoors under the playhouse tent.

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Reach Editor John Voket at john@thebee.com.

Here's a sample of Colin and Brad from their Two Man Group DVD:

Check out a clip of Colin Mochrie in this hilarious outtake from the US version of Whose Line is It Anyway?