EFS - COPS

EFS – COPS - Keystone cops without the non-stop music or madcap pace. Two unrehearsed performers and one inept stagehand take on the world of law enforcement .. with a little CIA thrown in .. and treat us to the training techniques of undercover agents.
This is a sure-fire recipe for nonsense. And fun it is. EFS is a threesome whose delight in playing together is infectious and uplifting, and who clearly love playing with an audience.

Lots of the bits are old stand-by’s .. offstage crashes, missed entrances, re-appearing objects, mistaken identities .. and
some were really funny. Though even with these old bits, timing and tone is everything. The funniest bit was the shooting range, using the hapless dupe as a happily moving target in the audience. It was one of the few times I remember him actually engaged in an activity, - the other being when he was playing a dog. The rest of the show his primary focus was telling us how inept he was. The problem for me is that if you play “I’m stupid’ and .. god forbid .. “I’m also cute”, you don’t give yourself much to ‘play’. Not only do we end up not believing you, we don’t care. If you come onstage ‘telling’ us you’re stupid, then we have no expectations from you and there’s no way you can fail .. or make us laugh. As well, all your energy and attention goes towards convincing us you’re stupid, rather than getting on with the task at hand. I never believed these guys really wanted to demonstrate anything to us except how dumb they were .. which doesn’t take 65 minutes.

What neither they nor the audience knew the night I saw it, was that the volunteer they picked for their Interrogation scene happened to be a former Ringling Bros trainer, now a juggler and fire eater. He stole the show the same way kids and animals do .. he was just himself. He was open, he was curious, he was innocent. We believed him .. and he was funny.