The joy is in the journey at the Queen’s Players’ show.
On Nov. 12, Are We There Yet? The First (and last) Chungus Games ft. Vechicular Man’s Laughter celebrated its opening night. The crowd held about 25 people. Attendees leaned into the “audience participation” aspect of the show with gusto, dancing and clapping at all the right moments. Featuring a whacky cast of characters, the Players brought enough team spirit to liven The Mansion’s attic space for years to come.
The show was electric from the start. A full rock band and horns section burst to life at 8 p.m. sharp, with a rendition of “God Save the Queen,” a Players tradition. Cast members emerged from backstage following a video introducing their characters, cleverly narrated as a scenic driving tour of Kingston. Characters ranging from “The Grinch” to a Diva Cup graced the stage, performing witty monologues to introduce their chosen roles.
My personal favourite was a spiel delivered by Travis Kelce about how his fiancé, Taylor Swift, recently enrolled him in remedial reading program Kumon.
The jokes didn’t stop there. Interspersed among choreographed skits involving an ill-fated road trip, characters performed solo covers of popular songs, creating a situation where it felt perfectly reasonable to hear Jim Halpert sing 5 Seconds of Summer’s “She Looked So Perfect.”
Cast member Lucas Nasu Nielsen, ArtSci ’26, plays Halpert. He explained in an interview with The Journal that the character was one of several he auditioned with, which are later narrowed down by the show’s director, Reanna McIlveen, Sci ’26.
The road-trip premise was also determined ahead of time, giving actors time to craft coherent scenes with “sketch comedy vibes,” Nasu Nielsen said.
The plot can “kind of stand-alone if people are going to the bar and getting drinks or stepping out for a second. They’re still able to come in and keep up with what’s going on,” Nasu Nielsen explained.
Catering the show to the audience is part of what makes Players performances special. “The environment of being in a bar sort of lends itself to something that’s a little more lighthearted and a little less serious,” Music Director Carson McNeice, CoEd ’28, said in an interview with The Journal.
“It’s a play you can jump at,” he added.
As an audience member, what struck me most about the show was how Players were able to take such outlandish performances and rationalize them throughout the course of the story. The comedic chemistry between Diva Cup and Kelce’s characters made their slapstick Las Vegas wedding perfectly reasonable near the end of the show’s first act. That sentence might make little sense in any other context, but reviews of Players shows seem to work alongside the same logic as the shows themselves—anything goes.
But where anything can happen, everyone’s welcome. Cast members encouraged the audience to get up and dance during solo songs, and crew members took time to explain long-running Players traditions to attendees before the show started. My favourite was shouting, “Seamless!” every time a Player flubbed a line, making mistakes a shared, comfortable experience.
Show-related traditions are “super fun and unique to Queen’s Players,” Stage Manager Emily Masson, ArtSci ’26, said in an interview with The Journal. She shared one special opening night tradition where alumni Players create a unique welcoming celebration for rookie members.
Masson smiled as she kept the specifics a secret, not “spoiling the element of surprise for [those] who join the club in the future.”
Those who attend Players in the future are in for a treat, experiencing an off-the-walls performance that gets everyone in on the joke.
A perfect blend of stellar live music, side-splitting comedy, and electric team chemistry, Are We There Yet? will no doubt warm hearts and deepen laugh lines throughout its fall run.
Tags
comedy, Live Music, Queens Players, sketch comedy, Student clubs, Student life, Theatre
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