"Family Dinner" at the Dudley Riggs Theatre

My favorite improv show is back! Improvisor Molly Ritchie started Family Dinner, a two-act improvised play about, you guessed it, a family gathering for a holiday* dinner, about 20 years ago. The show eventually landed at HUGE Theater where it played to sold-out houses for 13 years until HUGE sadly closed its doors last year. But it has found a new home at the Dudley Riggs Theatre, the home of Brave New Workshop and part of the Hennepin Arts group of theaters. It's been playing every Friday and Saturday since November 7, and will continue through the end of December (that means just four more shows!). It's become a sort of tradition for the Twin Cities Theater Bloggers to gather for our own TCTB family dinner, and then watch a performance of the most hilariously awkward Family Dinner you'll (hopefully) ever experience. I joined my friends from Beyond the Curtains, Minnesota Theater Love, Play Off the Page, The Stages of MN, and Twin Cities Stages for a fun evening of dinner (at Crave right across the street) and comedy on Hennepin Avenue.

I've attended Family Dinner every year since 2017 (including the very appropriate Zoom Family Dinner in 2020). The format of the show never changes, and some of the same improvisors return year after year. But the show is different every time. At each performance, six performers from a rotating cast of a dozen create a family, relationships, and some sticky situations right before our eyes. To spice things up a little, each improvisor is assigned a secret (pulled from audience suggestions), which they can use however they choose (or not). At our show the secrets included a hot sweaty affair (or two), a million-dollar TikTok earning, a new food truck, and a 6-month abstinence from devices. The secrets give the improvisors somewhere to go, or something to play off of, but the true joy is watching this made-up family with all their delightful messiness.

The family I observed was two sisters (Kelsey Dilts McGregor and Vann Daley), each of whom has two adult children. One pair of siblings (Destiny Davison and Ross Flores) are twins who have a YouTube show of them doing silly skits and songs, the other pair of siblings (Butch Roy and Evelyn Vocu) live together and are hosting the gathering. In Act I, we're introduced to the family and witness paired conversations or bigger group scenes. Someone calls, "dinner's ready!" and we break for intermission. Then the fun really begins. They set up a long dinner table with actual real food, and in Act II the family assembles around the table and actually eats dinner. And that's when the most juicy secrets come out. In all my years of Family Dinner, I'm not sure I've ever seen anyone walk away from the dinner table before, but this secret was so scandalous that one sibling pair just got up and stormed off. But don't worry, they came back, and everyone made peace with each other, and sat back down at the table. Just like a real family dinner!

For the best holiday comedy, don't miss Family Dinner in the street-level performance space at Dudley Riggs Theatre, AND Brave New Workshop's hilarious sketch comedy show The Chaos of the Bells upstairs. The latter is performing through January 17, and they also have 4:30 shows the next two Saturdays so you could see both shows on one day, which would make for a great comedy double-feature (if you can handle that much laughter in one day).

the TCTB family at Family Dinner

*Click here for reviews of all of the holiday shows I've seen this year.