Nevergreen Comedy Troupe returned with wild and overly sexual show

The Nevergreen Sketch Comedy Troupe performed in a raunchy Saturday Night Live style last weekend in the Blackbox Theater. On Friday night, the show sold out, and people were loitering around the Box Office waiting for reserved tickets to remain unclaimed so they could jump on them.  All profits went to Operation Smile, an organization that provides free surgeries to children to repair cleft lip, cleft palate and other facial deformities.

 "The Nevergreen Green Sketch Comedy Troupe writes, directs and performs its own unique sketches in addition to performing stand-up. As a result, our comedy is college-level and we would like to inform our audience that it is rated ‘R.' "  The disclaimer on the back of their program proved to be very true, because sexual innuendos and jokes ran rampant throughout the entire show.

All of the sketches were written by members of the Nevergreens. While many jokes were funny, some did fall flat, which is understandable because this is not a professional comedy troupe but a group of hard-working college students trying to make Loyola laugh.

Some of the biggest laughs always come at the expense of Loyola. Mocking the food at Moe's and the Jesuit ideals received a big laugh. Several times during the show, people donned green Loyola SuperFans shirts as they made their quips at the expense of Johns Hopkins. In the sketch, "The Red Avenger," the hero of the sketch was senior Chris Uehlinger as an il Piatto delivery man, causing everyone in the audience to reminisce about il Piatto.

One memorable sketch was entitled "The One About the Laptops," written by Chris Uehlinger. He appeared as the teacher in a classroom full of students on their laptops not paying attention in class. A voice-over explained what each member of the class was doing. One person was writing a sexual Urban Dictionary entry, another student googling herself, one using StumbleUpon, and another getting RickRolled on Facebook (for anyone who does not know, it is when you click on a video and it plays "Never Going to Give You Up" by Rick Ashley). One actor played a robot programmed to sit in class that could not pronounce the letter "P." It was funny, well-performed and relatable to practically everyone in the Blackbox. Who among us have not goofed off in class as opposed to paying attention?

Junior Brennan Dyal performed stand-up comedy and advertised for the new Stand-Up Comedy club on campus. He went abroad to Thailand in the fall and made jokes about his experiences. Dyal pointed out how sick everyone else is of hearing how being abroad changed a person's life, but he "had the microphone so you have to listen." His best-received joke was when he mentioned Gilmore Girls and how if "any guys get that reference, we should talk after the show."

One thing that I did not enjoy about the show was its overly sexual nature, along with much of the unnecessary cursing. Some of the cursing seemed to be occurring just for the sake of cursing and did not add to the skits. Many of the sexual jokes fell flat with people murmuring in the audience instead of bursting out in laughter. "Harry Potter Post-Grad" was filled with too many worn-out sexual references to various chambers of secrets and golden snitch comments that many of us had heard before. "Black Tie Affair" and "Double or Nothing" both tried too hard to be strange and came off a little lackluster.

The set was the same gray walls that were used in last week's Spotlight Players' production of Two Rooms. It allowed the actors to change backstage without being seen. All of the set pieces were moved on and off by the members of the troupe. The show was also very well lit for each scene change and to highlight certain attributes of each scene. The music was well-chosen but a little hard to hear in the theater.

This group lost several seniors last year and has acquired several new members since the Nevergreens show last April. It is not the same group that it once was but different is not always bad. Every member did their best at the show and did not appear nervous or flustered. Though the show was overly sexual, it was well performed and organized, and the parts that were not as sexual were extremely funny.