Interludes

THE HANGOVER REPORT – FREESTYLE LOVE SUPREME is a fast-and-loose evening of improvised hip-hop euphoria

• By drediman
• February 17, 2019
• No Comments

Anthony Veneziale, Chris Sullivan, Andrew Bancroft, Christopher Jackson, and Utkarsh Ambudkar in “Freestyle Love Supreme” at the Greenwich House Theater. Photo by Matthew Murphy.

For a pure rush of adrenaline and indisputable bravado, you can’t go wrong with the Freestyle Love Supreme – a fast-and-loose evening of improvised hip-hop euphoria conceived by Thomas Kail, Lin-Manuel Miranda, and Anthony Veneziale – at the Greenwich House Theater. With a running time of less than 90-minutes, I can’t think of another show currently in New York that packs as much unadulterated entertainment or as many exhilarating peaks per minute as this little bombshell of a show.

The show amazes with its incessant ingenuity, incredible smarts, and genuine goodwill. Although there’s a fairly simple overarching structure to the proceedings, each show is inevitably different. How each performance unfolds depends on what the audience prompts the skilled performers to riff on. Each show’s trajectory can also be impacted by the whim of the requisite special guest; the possibilities are enticingly limitless. Depending on the performance you attend, you may get the likes of Christopher Jackson, Daveed Diggs, James Monroe Inglehart, or Mr. Miranda himself.

The show has been directed by Mr. Kail (who also helmed that little show you may know called Hamilton) with great heart, selfless swagger, and surprising focus. The Freestyle Love Supreme’s exultant core players include Anthony Veneziale (aka Two Touch), Chris Sullivan (aka Shockwave), Utkarsh Ambudkar (aka UTK the INC), Bill Sherman (aka King Sherman), and Andrew Bancroft (aka Jelly Donut). Each one is a genius in their own way. Collectively, they create a single orgasmic organism that generates often breathtaking – at its core – musical theater. The show is clearly a labor of love, and it shows – and it’s all the more infectious for it.

FREESTYLE LOVE SUPREME
Off-Broadway, Musical/Revue
Greenwich House Theater
1 hour, 20 minutes (without an intermission)
Through March 2