The Second City is nothing if not responsive. I mean, really: Nothing. Responsiveness is the whole point of an improv-based, satirical theater. The institution has no entertainment value if its ensemble members fail to respond to one another and no relevance if it fails to respond to the world.
One standout apolitical sketch consists of nothing more than a quiet conversation between a successful son and his fuckup of a mother as they sit outside his Lake Forest manse. Another goes full-bore absurd when a musician shows up to entertain a kid who’s just been through an appendectomy. Floating somewhere between genres is Martin Morrow‘s engaging monologue delivered from an Alabama porch—supplying, among other things, a weirdly apt picture of Indiana as an overturned Greyhound bus that somehow became a state.
Open run: Wed-Thu 8 PM, Fri-Sat 8 and 11 PM, Sun 7 PM, Tue 8 PM Second City 1616 N. Wells 312-664-4032secondcity.com $19-$46
