Piccolo Fringe: Chicago's 'The Reckoning' serves up sushi in Charleston

Image by Chuck Boyd

Well, not really an actual Japanese meal but The Reckoning improv group asked the audience for one word for the entire show. That word Sunday at 9 p.m. was Sushi.

Theatre 99 - host of the 10th annual Piccolo Fringe - offered the famed 6-member Chicago troupe a bare stage and several folding metal chairs. They brought everything else.

The folding chairsĀ  became a tiny Japanese restaurant and patrons were asked to sit close together. Then even closer. Get closer, a table is being added. Private, intimate conversations were shared as were the various seafoods.

Then the chairs became a casket display room, Robin Hood welcomed everyone to "The Hood" and the scene shifted to Kindergarten, a teacher's break room with a smoking principal and then a princely "Royal" interviewed a nervous potential bride.

"It's not that I'm deaf, my dear, I'm a man and I seldom listen when you talk," he explained.

Of course the hiliarious hour returned us to sushi.

The Reckoning was on a roll.

Unfortunately Sunday's show was their last show for the festival.

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