Scott & Meg–Tonight as 6, at Organic Theater Company Greenhouse, South Hall.
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Meg Martin and Scott Prendergast, a young-and-coming comedy team, are fast, fluid, quirkily eloquent improvisers well worth watching. Their late-night offering showcases an awesome ability to work and play together as they create six full characters inspired by audience interviews in 75 minutes. Deftly delivered, with wry surprises and escalating quirks, were three romantically tied couples whose sexes varied from those of the actors: an unbearably rich playboy and his southern-belle bride, a shy puppet-factory employee and an irate customer complaining about an exploding Gonzo doll, and a calculus geek who finds his true equation in a clueless English nerdette. Prendergast and Martin create the sextet through three long-form sketches, then reprise them in a professor’s pompous lecture, highlights from the scenes, and a set of situations–songs, mime, ordinary events–during which they remain flawlessly in character(s). They also reinvent a fairy tale using the same six figures: Cinderella’s saga, with the inevitable smashup of the glass slippers as the obvious climax. Finally the players line up six chairs and invent touching eulogies for the soon-to-expire sextet.