How We First Met

My wife and I attended a Valentine’s show years ago and were selected by the audience to be the couple featured in that evening’s show. Each couple is invited to submit a brief description of how they first met, and then the audience votes on the story they’d like to see performed by the comedic actors. As the selected couple, we were invited to sit on the stage on a small couch, where we were interviewed by one of the production staff members, who elicited details about how we first met, and then the troupe lampooned our story. There were approx. 3 – 5 different skits performed with information gathered from our interview. It was romantic, silly, and a lot of fun!
Highly recommended if you have a unique first meeting story and/​or enjoy hearing about others.
Love wins!

I’m not much into comedies but my wife really wanted to watch the show so I got dragged into this from the beginning but I have to say that I was pleasantly surprised at how much I enjoyed the show. The show is made up of improvisational comedians acting out narratives of audience couples on how they first met. Sure the end result may not be very polished as it is improv but I thought the skits were entertaining and fun. Best of all, there’s so much that the main audience can relate to in the skits since they’re based on real life stories! The cool thing about this is that every show is inherently going to be different since the audience couples chosen will be different. I know from the other post that there may be some things found lacking but you don’t watch this kind of show with a magnifying glass ready to critique the hell out of it, you enjoy yourself and immerse yourself with what other people have gone through in their earlier stage of the relationship. Very funny is that I attended the same show the other reviewer commented about and I remember that one couple sharing too much info :) This is a great show for a relaxing and fun time out with your significant other!

My fiancé and I saw this show for Valentine’s Day, and it was great! …though maybe not for all the reasons they intended it to be.
The concept: three couples tell the story of how they first met in bits and pieces; a four-​person improv cast acts out select scenes. Hilarity ensues!
We were selected as one of the ten semi-​finalists to tell our story and have it acted out onstage, which meant we got to make a one-​minute video promo to show the audience. The show starts with the audience viewing all ten of the video promos, then ‘voting by applause’ to tell which three they wanted to see.
I hate voting by applause. And not just because I’m bitter. Just because it’s unscientific.
We didn’t win. We came in fourth. Which means that the show automatically produces fourteen extremely disappointed audience members in the first ten minutes.
The other problem with the system is that the audience goes for the gimmicky stories (like, one couple told the audience that the girl wasn’t wearing panties)… which might not (read: did not) make the best improv fodder. The audience doesn’t know what they want!
As for the actual show, the improv team is pretty clearly the B-​team; there were only four improvisers and of them, one of them was the clear standout in terms of skill, originality, ability to listen, and general sense of humor. And the host, Jill Bourque? She’s not funny. She’s self-​proclaimedly «shy,» and micro-​manages the show in a way that gives the improvisers so little lee-​way… There’s no room for surprise in the scenes, which is what makes them funny! She tells the improvisers exactly what to act out and how to act it out, assigning them roles and topics and settings. What exactly are they able to make up? The failure in this was apparent in the few scenes where the improvisers got some freedom… Which were hilarious, without exception.
The show could be made a lot better– and no one would leave disappointed– in a few ways: 1) have the chosen couples be picked completely by online voting; 2) switch couples at intermission (we didn’t need to hear the same stories for that long!); and/​or 3) have the improvisers pick from the submitted stories which ones they’d like to see… or 4) some mixture of these ideas. Plus getting rid of the host role. It’s unnecessary, except for asking questions about the stories. Sort of.
This show moves around, so I won’t review the venue here, but we had no complaints at the Marines’ Memorial Theatre!
Like I said, we enjoyed the show… but more than anything, enjoyed making fun of how weird the chosen couples were, or how awkward Jill was… plus the box of See’s candies we got as a consolation prize for not being picked!