It was the way so many of the great romances have begun: by chance. [the others? take a quiz.] I loved what I saw, even though I wasn't sure what I was seeing.

Yesterday, in downtown Portland, my two planned events having come to a relaxed conclusion, I was limping thoughtfully towards the stop for the #20 bus. And I passed the Brody Theater storefront (terrific banner for the theatre, visually-dull-but-lucid "what's playing now" signs) where there appeared to be some long-form improv underway, and although I had just missed the opening, I paid and went in.

[Skippable background: When I think of improv I think of Augusto Boal, because the Ludologists (with Gonzalo and Jesper on lead vocals) revere him. A Sydney friend (from Holland) does theatresports but I have not yet had a chance to watch her. I caught some of What's My Line when I was waiting to tape the show that came on afterwards. And I've been told that the key to improv is saying YES to the others with you. Going with it. Not unlike the key to life.

To sum up, mine is an almost completely naive audience-member-reaction. But *looks around the net* lots of people write on subjects of which they are almost completely ignorant. En avant.]

The Liberators seem to be coy about their names, perhaps to emphasize that they are a troupe. When an audience member yelled for them to introduce themselves they ignored her, until at the end of the final set they mumbled some names over the screaming and applause. Here's the only photo of them (by Brian McDonnell) that I could find that is on a page with their full names, but even then it doesn't say who's who so, taking my best guess, from the left: Nicholas Kessler, Shelley McLendon, John Breen, and Tony Marcellino...and perhaps Sirius Black on the rug.

This photo is by Andy Batt (this time Nicholas Tony John Shelley??):

They did two 45-minute "long form" somethings or other (divided by an intermission), and because I am a geek I was trying to figure out "the rules". (The other rules, besides the Yes.) They started with just one audience suggestion, they tapped each other's shoulders either when they thought the energy was about to run out or when they got another idea, and members not currently on stage could shout developments or create sound effects or sing songs. And some of the themes and characters in this blender started to recur and develop (this might be where that "long form" comes in), and both sets had bang-up endings, including sufficient elements provided for those of us who love closure to make our own closure with (if we were in the mood for it).

What I particularly liked was the high level of quality throughout: unfailingly, they tapped each other long before I personally became tired of anything. They went with the YES into areas that seemed dangerous, and stayed centered as they went to the edge. Beyond simply creating shticks, they created characters (including non-human characters: washing machines and oscillating fans with personality to burn, and a memorably dysfunctional herd of woolly mammoths) that invaded my dreams, later that very night.

For the second set I moved from my "suitable for a discourteous latecomer" seat to the first row, and confirmed my earlier feeling that the gestures and facial expressions were NOT overdone; everything still worked from down in front. At that range I did sense occasional energy shifts that suggested the team had stumbled into [somethings] that they had used before (and those were justly brilliant and sizzly), but also telegraphed their determination to mess with the known or do something different this time. I also loved the bits that seemed to me "way out without a net" whether or not they ended up anywhere, and was willing to overlook one tiny instance of corpsing in the second half. As far as other mistakes, when Nicholas as the woolly mammoth therapist confused the names Ruthie and Rebecca and Rachel, they went with it (Shelley, playing Ruthiemammoth, said "Who's Rebecca?"; Tony revealed himself as Rachelmammoth), and the resulting chaos was more fun than one of those plays where everything makes sense; I've co-written a short one of those so I can say it...

In terms of the rules for the audience, it was clearly not a show where the audience constantly yells things. When the rules say one CAN yell, or even if the rules don't say one can't, you will hear my voice. But here, after the first suggestion, it was a theatrically sacred space; we laughed but we didn't call out.

An example of just one time when "not yelling" was excruciating for me was (with apologies for not conveying the full quality of this) where John (an outstandingly physical actor, which is not to dis his feverishly inventive brain either) had finished a big painting, and he'd decided to kill himself because it wasn't good enough, and Nicholas was saying au contraire, this is IT, this is the breakthrough, the painting that will get the world to see what John is capable of and also incidentally get the two of them out of this dump of an apartment…

Just as it seemed that Nicholas had convinced John to calm down and eat something, and a cold lamb chop was evocatively conjured out of an invisible fridge, it turned out that John was trying to choke himself instead, the lamb chop being just another instrument of self-destruction, and in the ensuing tussle the lamb chop was hurled paintingwards, where it stuck onto the wet surface of the newly finished masterpiece. Well, quite a few scenes later we were suddenly back in that same apartment, and Shelley the art dealer dropped her drink in amazement as the curtain fell away from the painting, and of course all I could think about was the fricking lamb chop: is it still there, and what will she say about it?

And I wanted to call out, I really did, but it also seemed to be a holy moment, and no one else screamed either, and Shelley made us all wait for it, in an excruciatingly impressive display of control, and then what she did with the meat-studded painting was so amazing that it would be unfair to even try to recapture it now; the whole point of live theatre is that you had to be there, and I hope that the next time the Liberators are in your vicinity, you will be.

I also have to mention the long moments outside of regular time and space in which Shelley, as a streewalker, was patting the belly of John, a pregnant streetwalker, in order to feel the baby kick, and Nicholas was playing the baby's kicking feet and its head…it could have been a traffic jam up there (and I was way in the back for this part) but it worked amazingly well. Generosity and trust and charisma all 'round: to use an Aussie reference, it felt like Working Dog but where everybody got to be Rob Sitch…

After I got home I read the web site. The Liberators have been together for four years (I imagine the founding meeting, in which they said to each other, "No weak links! Nobody we have to carry…"), are well known locally, and have side projects including teaching and short films. The reviews imply that their improv as The Liberators contains more sexy material than most, in which case I don't want to see "most", because the amount of sex seemed to me to be just right. John and Tony were the ones who brought in the sex most often, and always creatively; Nicholas' prevailing note seemed to be joy bubbling up from inside, even when he was running a string of prostitutes or otherwise being villainous. Shelley: well, I'm going to invite my women's meetup group to come see her in Girls! Girls! Girls! All Women All Improv on July 24th and/or 31st and not out of pity.

In the service of credibility I will now air the few concerns that I did have, which were sartorial. Nicholas' and John's neutral clothes vanished gracefully (into the performance! not what you thought!), but Tony's clothes were kind of "I hate my body". True, Tony was also contorting his limbs because he was speaking in tongues (act 1) or being burned as a witch (act 2); he seems to like working against his heart-throb-style face, so perhaps the baggy scruffies were intended to discourage people crushing on him. Tony, there are better ways. And compared to the others', Shelley's ensemble had too much going on. Red shoes are always magical, but the deep coral sweater wasn't quite the same shade as the shoes and the summery white top would have been fine on its own. And I'm sure that if I ever took an improv course the first lesson would be what to wear ("cover your arms"?) and I will have got this all wrong. Oh, and Shelley said something disrespectful about Twitter which made me instantly decide to write this review and tweet it.

So: come see them in August or as soon as you can, before they move somewhere to become even more famous. Unless "doing world-class work and staying in Portland" is the new black, which I hope it is, for myself as well as for … ladies and gentlemen … The Liberators.