Baby Wants Candy Accompany comedians to a bar’s karaoke night and you’ll quickly discover how tremendous the overlap is on the Venn diagram of improv versus musical theater nerds. This long-running troupe’s signature show is where the two fandoms are wedded to create an hour of giddy, off-kilter, harmonious enlightenment . . . and also some dick jokes. The current Chicago iteration, now in new digs in Judy’s Beat Lounge at Second City, promises to be a reliable source of live band-accompanied levity and whip-smart sketch weirdness. While BWC landed in thorny territory early on during opening night—a lily-white ensemble satirizing the Standing Rock standoff—it was a particular joy to see the cast’s deceptively astute story maneuvering and self-deprecation enable them to walk a precarious tightrope without a fall. —Dan Jakes
Seriously Unprepared Presents: Lives of the Prepared Comedy students and writers’-room diehards will get the most out of this laid-back conversation and two-person improv set emceed by Seriously Unprepared duo Jo Scott and Jeff Murdoch. Each week a different iO alum video calls in and answers questions about his or her professional experience postgraduation. At the show I attended, Conner O’Malley discussed his stint writing for Late Night With Seth Meyers and how routine it felt to develop material that was warmly received in the office but that unquestionably had no place on the show. Murdoch and Scott’s set inspired by the chat ran a little longer than it ought to, but they did achieve the dubious distinction of pulling off the most macabre pregnancy-related joke I’ve ever heard. —Dan Jakes
