Piscapo’s Arm, Oberlin’s only sketch comedy troupe, put on their first performance of the year at the Cat In the Cream Monday night. Packed with first-years and scattered upperclassmen, the nine-member troupe made it clear that there is more fine comedic fare to be had on campus than just improv. Their two hour-long performances were not flawless but certainly entertaining. Considering that auditions for new members are being held this weekend, there’s little more Piscapo’s Arm could have done to make their group more appealing to new students.

One might assume that being the only sketch comedy troupe on campus would make building a solid fan base an easy thing to do and entertaining them even easier. Yet this hasn’t been the case for the group. “I always hear people say, ‘Don’t we already have two improv troupes?,” cast member ad senior Michael Connor said. Many people come to Piscapo’s Arm shows expecting to see the kind of improv comedy made famous by Oberlin troupes like Primitive Streak and The Sunshine Scouts.
The very nature of sketch comedy can also make successful amateur productions difficult to pull off consistently. While audiences at improv shows tend to give the actors and actresses the benefit of the doubt whether they just pulled out a killer one-liner or fell flat on their face, sketch troupes have to have their lines right, their acting down and their jokes killer every time if they want to impress. The chemistry on stage and the writing have to be there. “There’s more leeway [in improv shows] because you know it’s being made up,” Connor said. “The crowd is just like, ‘Holy shit, they just made that up!’”
Despite these hurdles, the Piscapo’s Arm performance Monday night at the Cat was a success. An eager student body hungry for live comedy made the first of the two performances a standing-room-only affair, and despite all the stifling humidity produced by all those chuckling bodies, the second show was also well-attended. Everything from Oberlin student cliches, such as voice majors and socialists, to environmentalism, was fodder for the troupe’s comedic canon, and the majority of the crowd loved what they saw.
I
n part this positive reaction was stirred by the troupe’s decision last year to switch from a long-sketch format to a faster-paced show with little comedic “interludes” interspersed between shorter sketches. By minimizing down-time between scenes, the group sought to maintain the highest possible energy level. As senior co-director Mark Kornblume explains, “[We’ll] take the end of a sketch and rewrite [it] to flow into the next one.”
This fluidity worked in the group’s favor as an “interlude” provided one of the night’s better moments. Senior Aaron Mucciolo’s “dramatic reading” of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony was a joy to witness. Alone on stage and with the score in front of him, Mucciolo simply read aloud the opening few lines of the piece. One of the great musical treasures in Western culture suddenl yseemed utterly absurd when Mucciolo yelled with all the flair and conviction of speaker at a political rally, “E flat!” and “Quater rest!” until he was red in the face.
But the true gem of the evening was Connor’s parody of Steve Irwin, better known to fans of his TV show as the fanatical and fearless “Crocodile Hunter.” Irwin and his wife Terry, played by Carolyn Hayes, set out ot find the perfect first-year specimen, who, according to Irwin, is characterized by “dried vomit on the corners of their mouth” after a hard night of drinking.

Connor’s far-from-perfect Australian accent was easy to overlook given his limitless enthusiasm and his uncanny resemblance to Irwin, and the interaction between the dismayed student they found to “tag” (junior Seth Hrbek) and the two hunters was hilarious. Connor who wrote “Croc Hunter,” wasn’t the only cast member who displayed talent for comedic writing.
Hrbek’s “Mime Sketch” with its unique blend of sketch and improv techniques, was superbly done, as was sophomore Jessica Bedwinek’s “Russian Babysitter.”

The performance only seemed to drag when Piscapo’s Arm began to rely too much on their penchant for low-brow humor or self-referential parodies of Oberlin College students and events. “Sexcretary” and “German Chicken” both fell prey to the former, while “Tornado,” a sketch that imagines various Oberin “types,” such as voice majors and environmentalists, being blown by a tornado during a college tour, left anyone not familiar with Oberlin’s idiosyncrasies completely out of the loop.
But after four years of playing to Oberlin audiences, Piscapo’s Arm has learned to roll with the flat sketches and still come out on top. All the smiling first-year faces at the Cat Monday night promise that Piscapo’s Arm will have a whole new generation of students whom they can entertain for years to come.