Get realish. Awkward social encounters, fashion disasters, drunken confessions and unrestrained egomaniacal outbursts happen everywhere.
“Real Housewives,” for instance, have been found in Orange County, New York City, Atlanta, New Jersey, D.C., Beverly Hills, Miami, Potomac and Dallas. That’s how many iterations of the “Real Housewives” reality show have been on Bravo alone. Then there are all the spin-offs, the international variations (“Real Housewives of Athens”) and the board game.
As self-parodic as the series may seem, parodies of the “Real Housewives” are beginning to outnumber the “real” thing. One of the most fully realized, fully produced and widest traveling of these, “The Realish Housewives,” sets up house at The Bushnell April 14 to 16.
Like their TV counterparts, “The Realish Housewives” are everywhere. In Ohio, it’s the “Realish Housewives of Hancock County.” In Iowa, it’s “Realish Housewives of Des Moines.” In Denver, it’s “Realish Housewives of Cherry Creek.” One of the main producers of the nationally touring show is the legendary comedy theater Second City in Chicago, so “Realish Housewives” had its tryout roots in Illinois and Minnesota.
Although it helps if the show can work in a funny-sounding town name — “When we played Schenectady we kind of hit the jackpot,” says one of the show’s co-creators, Tim Sniffen — at The Bushnell it’s simply the “Realish Housewives of West Hartford.”
The idea of bringing the same characters to different cities was part of the original concept of the show. Kate James, who created the show with Sniffen, explains that “the TV franchise has eight or nine cities now — it’s an evergreen thing people will watch until it doesn’t exist anymore. It’s funny to say ‘Now, Potomac!'”
James and Sniffen are pretty itinerant themselves. Describing their creative partnership as “drinking buddies first and foremost,” they both toured with Second City as performers, and were both in Chicago when the show was getting developed, but Sniffen now lives in Scotland (where he says he’s “working on a series of novels that will make Harry Potter look like a pile of garbage”) and James has just moved to Los Angeles.
James and Sniffen check in with their “Realish Housewives” cast regularly, suggesting local-content or current-events material. The creators try to catch performances whenever they can. Sniffen, who is currently in the states working on a new comedy project in Chicago, says he attended a recent Boston engagement of “Realish Housewives” and was thrilled at how enthusiastic the crowd got.
“At one point, the whole audience was chanting this one audience member’s name,” he said.
As improv comedy professionals go (or real housewives, for that matter), Sniffen and James are refreshingly sympathetic to the needs and feelings of their audiences. They go out of their way to insist that, while there are several times in the show when audience members are approached by the cast, “they’re not going to get pulled out of the audience and ridiculed.” Likewise, West Hartford residents may be relieved that, according to Sniffen, “we don’t really make fun of the town we’re in. We make fun of these ridiculous characters we created who live in that town.”
Those characters include the show’s host Randy Bowen, obviously inspired by Bravo reality show pioneer and talk show host Andy Cohen, plus the titular housewives Ravonka (who affects a European accent), Brooke (a self-made businesswoman), the self-righteous gossip CL, indicted politician Gwen and stuck-up “neck model” Desiree.
Such an array of interests and attitudes mean that the characters can react to virtually anything that’s happening in West Hartford — or the world — when they’re at The Bushnell. You can expect Gwen, for instance, to have something to say about Thursday’s Democratic presidential debate between Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders in New York.
The cast is the same for the entire current tour: Jackson Evans as Randy, Lori McClain as Ravonka, Katy Carolina Collins as CL, Lindsey Pearlman as Brooke, Katie Caussin as Gwen and Emjoy Gavino as Desiree. All but Collins and Gavino have direct Second City connections. James praises the performers as “really good improvisers. They’re really adept at shaping what’s going on.” Sniffen adds that “being Second City-trained, they enjoy wandering off the script a little bit.”
The local content that fuels the shows come, the creators say, from three main sources: discussions with folks at the theaters who are presenting “Realish Housewives” weeks before the show has arrived; the actors’ own investigations once they’ve hit town; and the backstage crews at the theaters, who have turned out to be reliable founts of local lore.
Regarding the target of their mockery, Sniffen says, “When we started working on this, Kate knew the show really well and I did not. That was the perfect combination. You don’t need to know ‘Real Housewives’ to enjoy this show.”
To which Kate James responds, “If audiences need to prep for this, we haven’t done our job.”
For realish.
“The Realish Housewives of West Hartford” plays at Bushnell in Hartford on Thursday, April 14, at 7:30 p.m.; Friday, April 15, at 8 p.m.; and Saturday, April 16, at 2 p.m. Tickets are $24.50 to $74.50 for the Thursday and Saturday shows, and $29.50 to $79.50 for the Friday show. Tickets at bushnell.org and 860-987-5900.
