A very different kind of Las Vegas show opened earlier this month at Harrah’s Showroom, and although it’s definitely something new, it feels like a natural combination of two familiar entertainment elements, tailor-made for the Strip.
Hyprov: Improv Under Hypnosis is onstage at 8 p.m. Wednesday through Sunday and it’s exactly what it sounds like—a comedy cavalcade of trained improv professionals spiked with a hypnotist ushering in unpredictable audience interaction. The genesis of the show (pronounced “hip-rawv”) came when master hypnotist and entertainer Asad Mecci decided to take improv classes at Chicago’s famed Second City “to get better at stage craft and performance,” he says.
“What I realized was (that) they didn’t want us to consciously construct the comedy, to try to be funny, they wanted unconscious functioning. They would do all kinds of experiments and games to get that part of the mind engaged,” he continues, “and I thought to myself, ‘Wait—is it possible to take somebody with no improv experience and hypnotize them and turn them into a great improvisor?’ The answer has been a resounding yes.”
The next step in Mecci’s experimental process was to pair hypnotized audience members with acclaimed international improvisors such as the show’s co-creator, Colin Mochrie—who you’ve certainly seen weave comedic magic on Whose Line Is It Anyway?—and create something sensational, live onstage.
“I’m always trying to find ways to make my work difficult for myself,” says Mochrie. “Over the years of working on this, I’ve learned so much about hypnosis, and I think it’s made me a better improvisor because I don’t have a shorthand with these people (audience members) like I do with the guys I’ve worked with on TV. I really have to listen. Sometimes if you’re not listening, a beautiful moment that could be expanded on could quite easily leave. So it’s been a lot of fun, very challenging and exciting.”
Mochrie is rotating in and out of the cast of performers in Hyprov, along with other renowned comic minds such as Stephanie Courtney, the actress who plays Flo in those great Progressive Insurance commercials, and Jonathan Mangum, the longtime improv collaborator of Wayne Brady. No two shows are ever the same, and plenty of Las Vegas shows make that claim, but it’s obviously true with Hyprov, considering that the cast includes different audience members every night, “performing” while hypnotized.
“The audience participation is, I think, something totally different from any other show out there,” Mochrie says. “The quality of improv is amazing. I’m still shocked after doing it all this time to see these people become expert improvisors, pure improvisors, just reacting to what we give them. They’re just truly living in the moment, not going for laughs, just going with the scene.”
The show is worth investigation as a fascinating sociological experiment, but more importantly, it’s endlessly entertaining. For 90 minutes, Mecci brings 20 volunteers onstage to be hypnotized, and the most receptive individuals with join the improv all-stars for the rest of the show, completely under his spell for a wild, riotous ride.
“It’s a comedy high-wire act,” Mecci says. “Every night, we don’t know what’s going to happen onstage, but we always find one superstar. The audience is just in disbelief when they see these people, regular Joes doing extraordinary things.”
Harrah’s, hyprov.com
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