STAGE REVIEW : ‘SILLS & CO.’: WINNER AT THEATER GAMES

How does one review a show that changes from day to day and moment to moment, whose cast of characters differs at each performance and whose actors manage to vary nightly? You judge it on the merit of the experience.

By this definition, “Sills & Co.” is a gas--an evening of theater games that beats Trivial Pursuit by a mile and a half. The more blissfully trivial its pursuits, the more hilarious the unpredictable results.

Whatever the show you get, whatever the characters or the actors (the night I attended it was nine actors out of a possible 12), you’ll get your money’s worth (a modest $7) and then some.

Better yet, “Sills & Co.” is brought to you by experienced comedy pros at work--or rather at play. Remember San Francisco’s The Committee? Chicago’s Second City? Everywhere’s Story Theatre? These comedians are the graduates of those schools, the veterans of those wars, the pranksters of those gigs, and if they all look a mite older than a dozen years ago, so do we all. But nothing has aged in their craft; that has only seasoned and matured. And if you remember them from back then, it indicates you’ve had excellent theater habits--and superb taste in improvisational comedy.

Friday, at the company’s gleaming white theater on Heliotrope Drive (a wonderfully simple affair with a wide platform stage and comfortable bleacher-style seating), the nonsense began with a giddy drinking song (Hamilton Camp accompanied by his son, Halim Camp) that set the mood and the angle of vision: askew.

This launched us into a game of “Who Am I?” wherein one actor is sent out of the theater while the audience selects who he’s to be when he returns. The actor’s clues stem from the behavior of his cohorts, and such experienced farceurs got the answers within minutes--but not before we had our share of fun watching the cavortings that helped figure things out.

That was the easy part.

Next came a game of “gibberish”--or communication between two alien tongues as interpreted in English by a third. (You’d be amazed at the weighty content and profundity of mere inflection. )

Other exchanges followed--transformation of character, situation and age--based on Viola Spolin’s vast lexicon of theater games.

Not only is Spolin the mother of these playful and pivotal exercises that awakened an entire generation of actors (and audience) to the infinite possibilities of improvised buffoonery, but she is the natural mother of Paul Sills. Sills refined the entertainment potential of pure persiflage, impromptu whimsy and twaddle to a rarefied comic science.

As the father superior of these unholy proceedings, Sills presides over a team of champions that Friday included Lewis Arquette, John Brent, Hamilton Camp, Severn Darden, Garry Goodrow, Mina Kolb, Rachel MacKinnon, Ann Ryerson and Richard Schaal.

The tone of the evening is farcical-informal, with repartee and bantering for vocal accompaniment--wacky, delicious and droll. These comedians are so loose, so clever and capable of second-guessing one another’s moves that a very large part of the fun is watching the passes and huddles.

Among other scenarios, we were treated to a tale of Christmas turkey exorcism; to four friends going from the joys of kindergarten to those of a septuagenarian fishing expedition; to a pessimistic father greeting his infant daughter. (Warned the nurse: “Support the head.” Queried the dad: “Who’ll support the rest of her?”)

My favorite: The two Jewish trapeze artistes (Camp and Arquette) performing before the Pope. “Just what I need,” quipped Arquette, “to die at a cockamamie benefit surrounded by goyim !”

You had to be there--and you can be, Fridays and Saturdays, 8 p.m., at 660 N. Heliotrope Drive (near Melrose Avenue), we hope forever (660-2300).