Game Show

So you haven't had your fill of TV game shows and often wished you could either attend one or be a player. Well the opportunity is at hand, maybe not to win a million bucks, but some nifty prizes (airline tickets, digital camera, a DVD Player, or a TV) that is, if you are one of the four lucky members of the audience that gets called on stage to be a contestant. Otherwise, the chances are good, if you have an aisle seat in the 300 seat theater, that you will walk out with either a T-shirt or an autographed photo of the show's revved up host Troy Richard (Michael McGrath). Maybe if you are lucky you will also enjoy the goofy dramatic stuff that surrounds the more spontaneous, and often entertaining, quiz portion of the show. Who knows? You could end up a winner.

There is a backstage story that includes a sprinkling of hanky-panky and the machinations of a slick producer (Cheryl Stern, who wants to replace the current emcee with her lover (Jeb Brown), the smooth and glib guy who warms up the audience. Led by McGrath, who is fast and funny with many an off-the-cuff retort, the seven-member professional company give a convincing view of this madcap quiz-show world. The impressive, effective ambiance of a TV studio, with its active video cameras ever scanning the action and the audience, is the work of set designer James Youmans.

Even considering the blatantly dumb and dumber book devised by Jeffrey Finn and Bob Walton, director Mark Waldrop keeps the silliness aloft, undoubtedly with the help of an audience prompted (by an applause box) to scream and clap like a cheering section. It's hardly an intellectual exercise, but I have to admit that if I had been chosen, I probably wouldn't have won the contest.