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Harold Night Time Machine

As part of the special week of shows leading up to The Del Close Marathon, The UCB Theatre is having the Harold Night Time Machine, a reunion of some of UCB’s best Harold Teams ever.

It’s going to be pretty exciting for the improv nerds, a group in which I definitely include myself. People who have been around for a while will get to see some of their favorite ensembles perform one more time. Younger students, who haven’t had a chance to see these great teams before, will finally get a chance to see them in action.

First up is Creep, which is the longest running team in Harold Night history. (Bastian is about to eclipse them, but they’re still second as of today.) I still think Creep is one of the most underrated “great” all-time UCB teams. They went on an unbelievable winning streak of awesome shows during their prime and they set a new standard for stage presence and acting on Harold Night. And their group games were always on point. Memorable scene: Anthony Atamanuik, playing a detective, is interviewing Birch, who is a tenant speaking from the second floor balcony of his apartment building, about a murder. First beat is hilarious. In the second beat, Birch initiates the scene as the downstairs neighbor. His initiation to Anthony: “Hey! Psssst! Don’t listen to her!” as he points to the character he had played in the first beat.

Next is Arsenal, the team I felt like was the first “great team” I saw when I started coming to Harold Night. As a young student, I loved how they bent and played around with the structure of the Harold. They had a group mind that was evident from the first time I saw them. Also, their organics were entertaining and focused and always added a depth to their sets that a lot of teams past and present have a hard time achieving. My favorite Arsenal Harold was the one where the theme was “Make fun of Gethard.” There was one presentational group game where everyone was talking about stupid people and Gethard, looking for some respite from the teasing, says something like “Yeah, Cher is stupid! Right, guys?” Then Peter Gwinn, without missing a beat, says, “Yup, people who make fun of Cher are stupid!”

The third team is Dillinger, which I just missed out seeing. I started coming to Harold Night on February of 2005 and they had been disbanded by then. I saw the individual players play on The Shoves and Reuben Williams, though, which are two of my favorite improv groups EVAR. So you know they’ve gotta be good!

fwand is up last. It’s probably the team that the majority of the people in the audience will remember. The amazing thing about fwand was that they were all individually hilarious people, yet they took a giant risk as a team by doing organic edits in their Harolds. Their support and physicality was off the charts and, in a lot of ways, is unmatched by other teams past and present. One scene that sticks out to me: The suggestion to the Harold was “tea bag.” Dominic initated a group game where he just sat down on a chair, asleep. There was a momentary pause before everyone tiptoed in quietly and tried to tea bag him during his sleep. Right before they were about to do it, Dominic woke up, the entire group hid, and Dom looked around with a flashlight for any commotion. He went back to sleep again and the rest of the group tried to tea bag him again. They heightened this pattern hilariously: the group physically carrying Gil right on top of Dom, then Dom waking up and flashing an old-timey kerosene lamp, etc.