Decease and Desist at ColdTowne Theater

Austin is work­ing hard to estab­lish itself as a dom­i­nant force across all three com­e­dy are­nas. Standup has been boom­ing since COVID, improv has stepped up recent­ly with UCB join­ing forces with Cold­Towne The­ater (while Fall­out, Hide­out, and Mer­lin Works all offer plen­ty of class­es), and sketch com­e­dy is mak­ing sig­nif­i­cant inroads with sev­er­al Austin comics land­ing spots on the writ­ing staff and cast of Sat­ur­day Night Live in recent years.

Each of the main the­aters in town offers sketch class­es and shows, mak­ing the chal­leng­ing skills of writ­ing and per­form­ing acces­si­ble to any­one inter­est­ed. Cold­Towne The­ater’s lat­est sketch offer­ing, Decease and Desist, fea­tures an all-star cast direct­ed by Antho­ny Elli­son with assis­tance from Alexan­der Habi­by.

Decease and Desist is in the midst of a two-month run that kicked off Sat­ur­day, Sep­tem­ber 6^th and will wrap up Sat­ur­day, Octo­ber 25^th. While each week’s show fol­lows the same basic struc­ture and con­tent, no two per­for­mances are iden­ti­cal. The sketch order evolves as the team and direc­tor deter­mine the best way to keep audi­ences engaged from start to finish.

We typ­i­cal­ly think of sketch com­e­dy being born in writ­ers’ rooms and refined through dili­gent rehearsal until it’s ready for prime time. Decease and Desist​’s direc­tor took a dif­fer­ent approach: ​“For four months we met every Sun­day for three hours and spent the first 40 min­utes telling sto­ries to each oth­er about our lives, then imme­di­ate­ly start­ed doing tar­get­ed improv.” The improv devel­oped into sketch­es that ulti­mate­ly became the show.

The cast includes Abby Lin­coln, Gar­rett Rojas, Lau­ryn Ingram, Mal­lo­ry Hynes, Matthew Ston­er, and Zac Carr. They wear black through­out the show as an homage to the tagline ​“Death. Mon­ey. Sketch­es,” which appears in white text on the black back­ground of the show’s art­work. This sim­plic­i­ty allows the sketch­es and per­for­mances to take cen­ter stage.

What can you expect? I count­ed 16 dis­tinct sketch­es of var­i­ous lengths and inten­si­ty lev­els. While I’m not par­tic­u­lar­ly savvy at iden­ti­fy­ing how sketch­es advance over­ar­ch­ing themes, I took each piece at face val­ue and enjoyed the ride. The themes of death and mon­ey sur­face peri­od­i­cal­ly, but the sketch­es nev­er feel con­strained by these concepts.

The improv roots are clear­ly evi­dent in sev­er­al ​“group game”-inspired sketch­es. The sec­ond sketch fea­tured the entire cast try­ing to con­vince an imag­i­nary cus­tomer to buy a cas­ket. The pac­ing, com­bined with indi­vid­ual lines and syn­chro­nized group deliv­ery, demon­strates the exten­sive prac­tice this ensem­ble has put in over four months of collaboration.

Sim­plic­i­ty shows up in anoth­er way through the min­i­mal use of props and cos­tumes. A Robo­cop cos­tume appears in a recur­ring sketch, and Gar­rett Rojas tries on dif­fer­ent din­ner jack­ets in anoth­er. My per­son­al favorite ​“prop” was a music video. In this sketch, Matt Ston­er took a doc­u­men­tar­i­an turn — I won’t spoil it, but it’s won­der­ful­ly silly.

Days after see­ing the show, cer­tain sketch­es still linger in my mind. One of the most pol­ished ensem­ble pieces involves a win­dow wash­er (played expert­ly by Zac Carr) in a high-rise build­ing inter­act­ing with dif­fer­ent char­ac­ters along his route. This sketch could also be con­sid­ered a vari­a­tion of the group game for­mat since all actors par­tic­i­pat­ed. The writ­ing, act­ing, and object work were gen­uine­ly impressive.

Sev­er­al indi­vid­ual per­for­mances deserve addi­tion­al recog­ni­tion, though I’m hes­i­tant to sin­gle any­one out since the entire cast per­formed so cohe­sive­ly as a unit. There’s an ease to their group and indi­vid­ual per­for­mances that speaks to thor­ough prepa­ra­tion. The block­ing felt nat­ur­al and sec­ond nature — at no point did I sense any­one strug­gling with lines or transitions.

Mal­lo­ry Hynes’ evil CEO sketch was par­tic­u­lar­ly com­pelling. While the evil cor­po­rate exec­u­tive is a famil­iar trope, Hynes made it her own and had me con­vinced she could lead us all down a path of self-destruc­tion. Abby Lin­coln stood out in her sketch deliv­er­ing a Tony Award to her estranged broth­er. My per­son­al favorite per­for­mance came late in the show with Lau­ryn Ingram’s grad­ual melt­down as the office joke­ster whose place in the world becomes uncer­tain. An absolute­ly relat­able feel­ing in our cur­rent culture.

I real­ize I’ve high­light­ed the female per­form­ers, but I assure you the men excel equal­ly. Gar­rett Rojas, Matt Ston­er, and Zac Carr are hard­ly wall­flow­ers. Zac Carr anchored the win­dow wash­er sketch, and Gar­rett Rojas shined as a lovelorn stun gun vic­tim in anoth­er sketch.

Well-exe­cut­ed sketch com­e­dy is a beau­ti­ful thing to wit­ness. Is there room for improve­ment? Cer­tain­ly — I would have appre­ci­at­ed more nat­ur­al flow between sketch­es with some reorder­ing — but over­all, this show is clear­ly a labor of love for both the direc­tor and all six performers.

You have just over a month to see how the show devel­ops before this lim­it­ed run ends. It would be a shame to miss the chance to watch some gen­uine­ly hilar­i­ous sketch com­e­dy with­out hav­ing to trav­el to New York City.