Cecily Strong proved weak at improv performance
August 29, 2014
Cecily Strong proved to have a mixed ability at Wednesday night’s show in McAlister Auditorium.
The Saturday Night Live cast member was joined by two other improv performers for an hour-and-a-half show. Strong used a mix of scripted and improvised scenes which harshly contrasted each other.
Strong clearly demonstrated a penchant for writing. Her scripted scenes delivered solid punchlines and were met with unanimous laughter from the crowd. The written characters only had a few seconds of glory before the comedienne skipped to a new one.
One of her best bits involved playing several girls, ranging from a pineapple-loving New Yorker to a girl who believes an abduction and a proposal are the same thing. Each character only got a line or two of dialogue before being wrapped. The curtness of these well-written characters, however, took away from the performance, turning thoughtful ideas into one-line gags.
Strong also included a skit where two characters who may well have been 6 or 16 years old explained how Apple Jacks got its name. The skit was repeated with similar setups, only to have a slight variant on the original punchline. There were over five punchlines to the skit, none of which could stand on their own as a solid joke.
Where Strong truly flubbed, however, was in improvisation. The last 20 minutes of the show were dedicated to improv bits that required no audience participation. They were random, forgettable and poorly executed.
When the audience was asked to participate in improv, Strong excelled. An improvised story of The Boot’s founding started the show off with genuine laughs. Two students were also called up to the stage to help fill dialogue in skits, but the performers seemed to struggle with the uncreative choices they were given.
Strong and her two associates had a clear level of chemistry forged over several years. Her female counterpart seemed to direct the creative flow of most sketches. Strong’s male counterpart only appeared on the stage for about 10 minutes total, and then only to set up lines for the women.
The show was enjoyable, but somewhat disappointing. With fellow improv masters like Tina Fey and Amy Poehler, one expects a higher caliber of performance from an esteemed SNL cast member. Strong’s strength is clearly at the desk of Weekend Update.
A • Jul 15, 2021 at 12:20 am
This is old but kind of hilarious to read because it just proves to be so wrong. Did this person not notice any other sketches she did the year before or during her time as a Weekend Update? Even then she had a strong performance with characters, but at least there are some valid criticisms for where she could do better (and she did grow) for her character aspect of this random performance. But she was literally a member of Second City and was part of the touring improv group as well as the iO…seriously look up her episode of Mega the Podcast, the entire thing was improvised and she did it masterfully…don’t know if they realize this but every improv show is different–that’s kinda the point. And no audience participation is really hard to build a scene from. One “weak” improv performance (which had no examples provided by the way) does not mean the she was overall weak as an improviser. So making assertions like “she really should just be behind the update desk” or “Tina Fey or Amy Poehler did it better” (who have been doing it longer) sounded really stuck up…if I ever become a reviewer I hope I don’t make sweeping claims about people’s overall ability and look foolish later.