Review: Game Night at Up Comedy Club (February 18, 2015)

It’s Game Night at Second City in the Up Comedy Club.  The night starts by dividing the room up into East vs West.  Then, the first game begins with four Second City actors.  The rules are simple; get your partner to guess the famous person on the wall without saying the name.  In the second round, you use the same names but you can only use 2 words to describe the person.  In the third round, you can’t use any words and must act out the name.  It’s fun to watch them play, and it’s even more useful to learn the game so you can play it at your own parties.  Later on, there is a scavenger hunt where various odds and ends are collected and everyone who is double jointed or can sing a national anthem in another language goes on stage.  Oddly enough, there is only one person on stage from the east side who has one double jointed finger while the west side has about 10 people.  They have an assortment of double joints, including one women whose shoulder allowed her to wrap her arm behind her head way beyond most people’s ability.  They also have two people who sang the Polish and the German national anthem.

After an intermission, Family Feud is the game.  They have the authentic X image and sound whenever someone got an answer incorrect, but they didn’t have an interactive board of answers.  It was the west side verse the actors, who were completely throwing the game.  Next up was $25,000 pyramid where the audience created the answers by shouting out suggestions.  The first round consists of a player describing things within a specific category trying to get their partner to guess the items.  The second round consists of a player naming things that fit into a category while their partner guesses the category.  This game is fun, but something is lost when nothing is at stake.  The final game is charades where the answer is a song and their partner must sing all their guesses to the music being played by the musical director.

Overall it was a fun night, but it could be even better if they removed the Second City players and had the audience do all the parts of the game.  Also, if there were free tickets on the line for the winning team, it would be more competitive.  With these small adjustments, they’ll surely have a hit on their hands!