Before the quarter’s final Mee-Ow Show Saturday, Communication senior and co-Director Brenden Dahl warned audience members sitting on the Shanley Pavilion floor that they were in a “splash zone.”
“Knives Mee-Owt” put the eight-member cast’s physical chops on full display Friday and Saturday, from roller skating servers spilling beverages to twins cartwheeling in the womb.
Like its previous show “The Mee-Owgic School Bus,” the second performance of Winter Quarter stuck to Mee-Ow’s one-third sketch comedy, one-third improv and one-third rock music format.
But this time, the set centered around a wall of fake knives pointing to the Mee-Ow cat wearing Groucho glasses, a theme honoring the film “Knives Out.” Even The Mee-Ow Band donned white dress shirts, ties and black sunglasses.
“It’s more moody, mysterious and hot,” Communication junior and producer Zoe Davis said.
The ensemble learned each other’s comedic assets for the first show, Communication junior and cast member Spencer Thomas said.
With that knowledge, they curated “Knives Mee-Owt” sketches to individual strengths like slapstick or quick dialogue.
“We’ve really gelled into a well-oiled machine,” Thomas said.
This show allowed Thomas, who played a fan-favorite detective during the previous show, to experiment with extravagant characters.
In one sketch, “Sonic,” he portrays the roller skating server Dweeble. As a Sonic employee, he must deliver drive-thru orders on roller skates.
But as soon as he skates onstage, Dweeble crashes into two customers: Zach (Communication senior Ferdinand Moscat) and Friedrich (Dahl).
After twisting on the ground and crying out repeated expletives (“Fart!”), Dweeble gets to his feet. He says the order is “on the house.”
Friedrich responds in an exaggerated German accent that the food is actually “on the ground.”
Former Mee-Ow member Joseph Radding (Weinberg ’75) attended the 7 p.m. Saturday show. He said the blend of physicality and wordplay impressed him.
Radding co-authored “The Mee-Ow Show at 50,” a book about the show’s history. While the format has evolved over five decades, he said one aspect remains constant.
“Committing fully to what you’re doing is a lesson of Mee-Ow that everyone can take away,” Radding said.
Improv games require just that, even when an actor does not know what they’ll do next, Thomas said. As a new cast member this year, he said he’s learned from returning players like Communication senior Jeff Snedegar.
This quarter, instead of spending every day reviewing sketch submissions, Snedegar said the cast began “Improv Fridays” dedicated to practice.
“There’s no trick to improv,” he said. “It is purely a muscle. You just have to do it.”
“O2 Deprivation” requires cast members to dunk their heads in buckets of cold water. “Sex With Me,” a Mee-Ow classic that concludes every show, compares audience-suggested objects to, well, sex.
The latter game at Saturday’s 10 p.m. show bookended the Mee-Ow careers of Dahl, Moscat, Snedegar and Communication senior and co-Director Shai Bardin.
Snedegar said Mee-Ow’s schedule, while exhausting, turned him into a prolific writer. When he had to turn in two sketches every day for two weeks, he no longer dwelled on words like he would for a cover letter or email.
“That has given me such a confidence in my writing,” Snedegar said. “I feel like I can take on anything going forward.”
Email: desireeluo2028@u.northwestern.edu
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— The Mee-Ow Band twists, shouts and shines
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