The Hyprov show at the Sanderson Centre combined hypnosis and improv for a night of hilarity on Wednesday, January 29, 2025.
The two-hour show was created by hypnotist Asad Mecci and comedian Colin Mochrie in 2015, and last came to Brantford in 2019. Currently on a tour with 17 stops across Canada, they returned to a near sold-out show at the Sanderson Centre on Wednesday.
The evening began with Mecci inviting 20 volunteers on stage to be hypnotized. In order to volunteer, you had to be over 18 years old, and reasonably fit as some of the skits required a level of activity. Once 20 volunteers were up and seated in a row, the audience then watched as Mecci attempted to put them all into a deep hypnotic sleep. The audience had been instructed to stay as quiet as possible during this time, but couldn’t stop some laughter from escaping during moments when on-stage participants, deeply asleep, leaned over and got comfortable on the shoulders of strangers.
The volunteers who were the most receptive to the hypnosis stayed on stage, while the volunteers who weren’t falling into it – or who might, perhaps, have been acting a little too hypnotized – were gradually sent back to their seats. Once there were just six hypnotized volunteers left on stage, Mochrie led them in a series of improvised skits.
The format of the show makes it a little different every time. On-stage, Mochrie joked that it was going to become “painfully obvious” as they show went on that it was improvised.
Participants were seemingly under the control of Mecci, who would give them light directions to get them to engage in the improvised scenes. The musical director of the show, John Hillson, sat on stage, improvising along with them to provide music and sound effects with his keyboard.
Things nearly got heated in a dating skit, when one hypnotized participant was told to act as Mochrie’s jilted ex-lover who had just found him flirting with other women. She jumped into the role, sticking her finger in Mochrie’s face and yelling at him while he quickly backed away.
“Every show, we come closer to a lawsuit,” Mochrie joked.
Later, a superhero-themed skit featured a ‘super team.’ The super team’s identities and powers were created through a combination of suggestions from the crowd and from the imaginations of the hypnotized participants. The resulting heroes included a llama shark, who was good at kicking and biting but couldn’t swim; a super bowler, who could strike anything out but got nervous sometimes; and the drinking beer kid, who immediately tried to get handsy and had to be reminded by Mecci, “Don’t touch Colin – don’t touch me, either!”
The show kept the audience laughing, often in stitches, at the antics on-stage in the historic theatre.
“I don’t wanna do this anymore,” Mochrie joked, after dancing, going on several pretend dates, being shouted at by a jilted lover, and being kicked at. “This show is terrifying for me.”
Terrifying for him, perhaps, but highly enjoyable for the audience in Brantford that night.
