Reviewer Realm

  In “Hyprov,” audience members are hypnotized into performing sketches. The show’s creators argue that the novices make stronger choices than pros would. “The deeper you go, the better you feel. The deeper you go, the better you feel.” Last month, an hour before midnight at the Improv Asylum’s basement theater in Chelsea, a hypnotist made a surprise drop-in at a comedy show and growlingly repeated this phrase over and over, casting a spell on 20 strangers. Asad Mecci, a broad-shouldered charmer in black jeans, trained his unblinking stare on two rows of seated volunteers — heads slumped, bodies relaxed, eyes closed — and told them they had lost their belly buttons. Then he snapped his fingers and his limp subjects snapped upright, looking around, peeking underneath chairs, searching. The audience erupted in laughter. Then Mecci, 47, asked one frantic man what he was doing. “I know I had my belly button when I got here,” the man said, flabbergasted. It killed. In the popular consci...

If there are two more chilling words in the theatrical lexicon than “audience participation,” I don’t know what they are. Coming in a distant second: “jukebox musical.” “ Hyprov ” — the title suggests one of those much-advertised drugs whose side effects leave you quailing, and usually include potential death — may represent a peak moment, to use a faintly tired expression, or an apotheosis, to use a faintly pretentious one, of the increasingly popular trend of involving the spectators in the show. (Let me reconsider: Coming in that distant second place should be “immersive theater.”) Hyprov Reviews :  Improv Under Hypnosis Daryl Roth Theatre, 101 E. 15th St., New York $55-$95, 212–239–6200, closes Oct. 30 Subtitled  “Improv Under Hypnosis,” the production, created by Asad Mecci (the hypnotist), Colin Mochrie (the improv specialist, and a veteran of the improv-based show “Whose Line Is It Anyway?”), and Jeff Andrews (a producer, marketer, and collaborator of Mr. Mochrie’s), wi...