Often, on Sunday evenings when I'm headed to bed, I mentally kick myself for once again missing a chance to laugh myself silly. That's because I missed yet another presentation of side-splitting comedy by Unexpected Company, the best Improv troupe in Rhode Island.

Their performances have been called "riotous", "non-stop entertainment and fun", and "a breath of fresh air". These weekly shows are something no Rhode Islander should miss. Unexpected Company was founded to provide an outlet for the performance, instruction, and creation of original improvisational comedy in the Rhode Island area. The recipient of acclaim in the Ocean State and beyond, Unexpected Company has performed long-form improvisational comedy for Rhode Islanders every week since March 2003 and shows no signs of slowing down.

Almost everyone has been exposed to the TV show "Whose Line Is It Anyway?". That's short-form improv, where the entire show is made of two-minute segments. Unexpected Company's 12-person troupe uses a long-format comedy that they call "The Morris".

The Morris is simple to explain and hard to do: A one-word audience suggestion at the show's start propels each cast member into a monologue connected in some way - large or small - to the suggested word. The monologues, which can be composed of anything from edgy one-line jokes to whimsically recovered memories quickly segue into a kaleidoscopic array of completely improvised sketches. The actual (marriage/childbirth/death/career issues), the whimsical (alien invasions), and everything in between becomes the substance of the show that follows.

In one show that I attended, the suggested word "School Bus" brought up a childhood memory from one member, that spurred a second performer to talk about breakfast cereal, and a third to change to another tangent about showering and brushing his teeth, and on to the fourth, who got the skits rolling. The skit began with a very proud man air-drying himself after a shower in the gym. In a later skits, we had a college student that crashed the entire Internet, a very very unfaithful wife, and some pacifist loan sharks.

If a sketch begins to wind down, one of the group scurries across the stage making motions like a mime wiping clean a chalkboard, clearing the way for a new sketch. Sometimes the skits would echo something from a previous skit, for instance when the loan sharks complain that the Internet had been down all day.

The show runs in two acts, with a different batch of actors in each set and with a new starting word to get the ball rolling the second time.

The group recently performed at the world-renowned Edinburgh Festival Fringe, a massive arts festival located in the capital city of Scotland. The festival is comprised of the world’s best comedy, theatre, music, and other performance arts, atracting nearly a million people each year in just over three weeks. Unexpected Company waged their British invasion when they sent six of their members to the festival -- Greg DeSantis, Tom Gleadow, Sarah McLean, Brian Perry, Tim Thibodeau, and Mike Varejao. As usual, they left for their destination without a script or any idea about what they would perform. Their comedy was created on the fly, leaving festival-goers on the floor laughing.

But if you missed them in Scotland (or if you're like me and missed them last week), don’t worry; there are many opportunities to see the company perform. Most notably, you can see Unexpected Company perform every Sunday night at 7:17 PM at the Warwick Museum of Art on Post Road near the Warwick town hall in Apponaug village.

You can find Unexpected Comany online at www.unexpected_company.com

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