Creepin’ Comedy troupes have come a long way from shouted one-word audience suggestions to conjure inspiration for improv sets. Nowadays, half the game is coming up with clever jumping-off points based on live interviews or found material to inform truly original, in-the-moment premises. Under the Gun Theater has made that something of a specialty over the years, finding great gags in sources from board games to pop culture franchises to remaindered books. This late-night Friday set tries to use one of its audience’s least flattering social media habits—lurking on crushes—to formulate story threads. The results are limited, so a few leaders often bear the brunt of stepping in to try to forge coherent comedic through lines. —Dan Jakes
Naked Boys Singing! Presumably, it was two out of the three words in this title that caused monocles to drop within the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Chicago, an organization with whom the Athenaeum Theatre—the venue originally scheduled—is affiliated. The subsequent last-minute move to Theater Wit gives an extra air of underdog scrappiness to this full-frontal, sex-positive silliness from Eclectic Full Contact Theatre, led by a gang of six handsome, mostly Helix Studios-ready twinky fellas. Book writer Robert Schrock’s risque camp and commentary on LGBT culture feel firmly planted in 1998, when the revue first appeared off-Broadway, and the cast’s voices work better as an ensemble than individually, but jokes like Danny Bradley’s “Perky Little Porn Star” and some more vulnerable numbers from Wesley Dean Tucker hold up as good, wholesome, R-rated fun. —Dan Jakes
