Game Show

Back in my wilder days, I remember going to a now-defunct Greenwich Village bar that featured a live game show once a week, every week. For the cost of a few cocktails, you could see half-drunk people answer trivia questions about old TV personalities, sing karaoke-style ditties and perform scavenger hunts, all in an attempt to win prizes such as stuffed cows, magnets, videos and the all-important grand prize: a $50 bar tab. It was loose and fun, and nobody ever seemed to care that the prizes could be bought at any 99 cent store half the time. The appeal was in the details and the promise of a good time with people who were all there for the same reason.

Now, at the same whopping price of the above-mentioned bar tab, you can see Game Show, a 90-minute interactive "play" that actually is a real-life game show with actual prizes (my night's top prize was a DVD player). Here's the catch: you have to also endure a stale, mostly unfunny, behind-the-scenes story about the game show's vain host (of course, a polished but plastic Regis Philbin type), the slutty, opportunistic producer (a woman, natch), the smooth warm-up guy with aspirations of his own, the overeager tech guys who talk women and gadgets, and the sweet PA who just wants to be host more than anything. In these roles, Michael McGrath, Cheryl Stern, Jeb Brown, Joel Blum, Brandon Williams and Jeremy Ellison-Gladstone try their best to make them something other than complete clichés but don't exactly succeed.

The fundamental problem with Game Show is that nobody actually wants to see the play portion of the proceedings. We want the gimmick, and when the show sticks to that, it's fairly entertaining. Three rounds of standard trivia questioning are presented, with four new contestants each round; the three victors duke it out to see who wins the grand prize. (The night of my performance, the DVD player was won by a prettily primped performer, who also happened to cheat her way to victory, by the way.) The questions are nothing that "Jeopardy!" fans will scratch their heads over, but it's fast and enjoyable. Honestly, the performers (especially McGrath as host Troy Richards) are wittier and sturdier when they're forced to improv than when delivering the play's trite dialogue (by Jeffrey Finn and Bob Walton). On the eve of my attendance, one seriously obnoxious female contestant was cheekily rebuffed by the host, bringing cheers from several audience members, providing an unrestrained sense of unroofed humor the rest of the shenanigans lacked.

Oddly, the play is a hybrid of two far-superior Off-Broadway offerings currently playing: Lifegame, the interactive retelling of one person's personal existence, and the wondrously funny Tabletop, a canny look at the world of television commercials. Game Show has neither of these shows' generosity, though. The comedy falters at all the wrong intervals, and the characters are simply not interesting enough to pay attention to between the admittedly alluring game show fodder. Like Lifegame, however, the play assumedly varies with every performance (it has to depend on the audience as well, but honestly, I could have done without some of the truly unctuous brood that accompanied me this night), but the soggy backstage soap opera seems to be a permanent part of it, which doesn't inspire much hope.

Regardless, the show will probably be a big draw, at least at first. The promise of big prizes and its colorful sets and initial rush of recognition (the early build-up to the show is pretty fun) is enough to whet interest. But rather than endure the showbiz piffle that punctuates it, you may just opt for watching "Wheel Of Fortune" with your pet…for a lot less dough. Or, like me, pray that some good soul will revive the local bar's nifty version; you may have won only a dusty Porky Pig cartoon, but at least you didn't feel you had to check your brain at the door to do it.