Crowd Control came out to Cholmondeley’s coffee house last Thursday to celebrate the end of Halloween. The title of their show was “Halloween Hangover,” and they made a point of blinking at the bright lights of the stage and moaning about how tired they were. One performer was even dressed in a Winnie-the-Pooh costume. Although this event was not well publicized, there was a decent turnout and a warm reception.

The group started out with line games, in which performers stand in a line and pop out with little jokes based on audience suggestions. For example, their first premise was “I love my partner like I love my ‘blank.’” The host fished various nouns from the audience such as “pizza,” and the performers would then step out of the line, one-by-one, and deliver a one-liner about what made their love for their partner similar to their love for pizza.

Next, the group moved into a movie game, coming up with fake movie titles based on an audience member’s initials — HD, for example — and performed scenes from the fictional movie. The highlight of this game was “Hydrogen Dodgeball,” a movie about a dodgeball game with hydrogen instead of balls. Two performers, playing stereotypical nerd characters, quickly scooped up the easy humor — they couldn’t see the hydrogen, but if they mixed it with oxygen, they could create water balloons! 

The last segment of the show began similarly to the line game. First, the group asked for a suggestion from the audience and got “pumpkin spice latte.” One performer then stepped forward with an anecdote about pumpkin spice lattes, and then subsequent performers came forward with anecdotes related to a detail from the previous one. After this, Crowd Control performed a series of sketches based off the anecdotes. 

One downside to the show was the group’s awkwardness in getting suggestions from the audience. For various sketches, they would ask for “nouns” or “verbs.” The broadness of this request often led to long pauses and a slew of suggestions that did not quite work. In addition, the timing of the sketches was occasionally off, with performers inserting themselves into scenes at awkward moments and derailing intriguing plotlines in favor of their own ideas. However, these flaws were minor. Overall, the variety of amusing characters and plots in this “Halloween Hangover” made for an entertaining show.