by STEPHEN ZUBRYCKY, Managing Editor

Scatterbomb started the school year off Friday night with a show entitled “Scatterbomb Breaks Up With Their High School Sweetheart.” 

The show featured the improv troupe’s returning players: senior Kevin Donald, junior Erin McWilliams and sophomores Jenn Bueti and Aedan Roney. Three new cast members: Moira Delaney, Brendan Hanney and Meredith Taylor made their debuts. 

The players – old and new – put on a gut-busting show to a full house in Hayden 100, where every seat was filled and every aisle lined with lined with laughing students.

“We used to have a foot guy too.”

The show started off with a suggested word from the audience. The players chose “pineapple.”

Donald began the bit by discussing how much he loved the Nickelodeon show “Spongebob Squarepants” when he was a kid. The players then tapped each other in and out, continuing each other’s storylines with funny quips.

Roney then started a new bit, of the same kind, in which he described his love of fresh fruit, and began listing the fruits he bought at the grocery store. The players then swapped in and out listing all the fruits they bought.

A third bit revolved around Donald, who was at the self checkout line at Walmart. Taylor, who was an employee, then came over to tell Donald that he had too many items, prompting Roney, who was playing a shift manager, to come over and get involved. Roney recommended Donald visit Walmart’s in-house nutritionist, next to the optometrist. Roney then bragged about Walmart’s former in-house foot guy, played by Bueti, where an unsuspecting Donald was soon found getting a full massage up his left leg.

“You shut the hell up, Remy!”

McWilliams started the next scene by pretending to swim with dolphins. We soon learned, however, that she was in a hotel hot tub. Taylor, who worked at the hotel, was given the task of holding up pictures of dolphins and making screeching noises. 

Bueti climbed into bed with Hanney for the next bit, followed by Delaney and McWilliams. 

A satisfied Bueti said, “First night of college!” before musing about joining the women’s rowing team.

“I hear that’s not a good idea,” Hanney said.

“I heard it’s actually not that bad,” responded McWilliams, a former rower herself.

McWilliams and Delaney started the next bit, in an IGA grocery store, by trying to sell guns at a table. Delaney was offering a 10 for $20 special on glocks, with the proceeds going to fund a second floor of Draddy Gymnasium. The scene concluded with a customer, Donald, asking McWilliams, “Where are you from? Fordham?”

Next, Donald and Roney pulled up chairs and lit cigarettes. “Picture this,” Donald said, before pitching an under-the-sea television show starring an anemone, a mollusk and a loofa.

“The loofa’s a loner,” Donald said.

“The loofa’s aloof-a,” Roney replied.

The chain smoking pair continued to light more cigarettes before hatching the idea that all of their undersea characters smoked, except a mollusk named Remy, who would try to get the other characters to kick the habit.

Sensing a stroke of genius, Donald and Roney got up and shouted in unison, “You shut the hell up, Remy!”

“Dead mom. Pervy dad.”

In the next scene, an 8-month pregnant Bueti is running a marathon with her husband, played by Hanney. Roney, a water salesman, comes by, eyeing up Bueti. The salesman makes Hanney jealous – and Bueti, despite her own flirtations with Roney, says she Roney was checking out Hanney – not her. Tensions increase as Roney returns, selling jewelry (for free) that has only Bueti’s birthstone and then “foot massages that slowly go up the leg.”

In the next bit, Bueti wows jump rope enthusiasts Donald and Roney with her “double jump,” for which there is an extensive warmup. Then the trio – all playing jock-like jump rope enthusiasts, beat Delaney and Hanney in a double Dutch competition.

The next scene starts with a strange dance from Donald and Roney. McWilliams jumped in, but her timing was off. The trio lamented that the America’s Got Talent judges would never pick them – until the hatched an idea.

“Our mom died,” the group announced to judges Howie Mandell, Randy Jackson and Nicki Minaj, played by Bueti, Taylor and Hanney, respectively.

“Is she in the audience tonight?” Hanney’s Minaj asked.

The group pointed to the mother in the audience, saying she was waving her hand.

“It’s rigor mortis,” Donald said. Then, the threesome’s father began kissing their “dead” mother, to which the dancers feigned disgust.

“Dead mom. Pervy dad,” Roney said with a sigh.

“I am Timothee Chalamet!”

For the second half, Scatterbomb would work with another suggestion: Florida.

Donald and Roney opened the set by sitting in chairs in the Florida swamp, wondering what to do with their lives, which, the audience learns, consists of throwing beer bottles at a billboard, throwing beer bottles at alligators, and throwing beer bottles at that “Forrest Gump-looking kid.” As the scene concludes, the audience learns that the two are actually sitting beneath the billboard, and they open their mouths and crane their necks in the hopes of getting a few drops as another bottle crashes against the billboard.

In the next scene, Hanney works as a staff member at Disney World, serving up bad news with a smile. First he warns Roney that plastic bags are not allowed at Disney World anymore and he’ll have to carry everything by hand, and that, no, he may not lift his shirt and use that to carry things because “there are kids here.” As Hanney explains the policy, Donald, his arms overloaded with merchandise walks past, exclaiming “Why did I buy a puzzle?!” Hanney then denies an on-her-knees McWilliams entry into a ride because she is not tall enough. 

The troupe then moved through a few smaller scenes in which they sing songs while cooking and doing the dishes and write letters to loved ones as a plane crashes.

In the next scene, Hanney enters the Hard Rock Cafe in Miami looking for actor Timothee Chalamet. The staff, Taylor and Donald, argue back and forth with him, telling him to leave the kitchen. Then, a tall, emaciated Roney enters, posing as Chalamet. 

“No, that’s Steven Tyler,” one of the cast member says.

Hanney then calls his mother – who lives next door and comes to scold the staff.

The scene concludes with Hanney exclaiming, “I am Timothee Chalamet!”

“GO BACK TO THE FOYER!”

The scene opens as a game of hide-and-seek, with “Come out come out wherever you are.”

Roney then stole the show, walking onto the stage with hands raised and an ear-to-ear grin, announcing, “I’m gay!”

Then the scene, cuts to Roney with his mother, Bueti, who asks him why he said it. 

“I learned it from Dad,” Roney said.

The father, played by Donald, enters the scene and Roney describes to Bueti how his father likes to play hide-and-seek “under the covers with Mr. Slavinski.” The parents send Roney away, and he goes to sit in the foyer.

Donald comes clean with his wife, saying he has been playing games with all the neighbors, including Yahtzee with the Smiths.

“That’s my favorite game!” Bueti said, dejectedly. “I don’t know if I can ever trust you again.”

Donald justifies it by saying that he was initially going to play Parcheesi but the game was missing pieces.

“Is that why I found those Parcheesi pieces in your pockets?” Bueti asks.

Then, as Roney tries to reenter the scene, the parents yell, “Go back to the foyer!”

The first show was an all-around strong start for the improv troupe, with impressive performances from the new cast members and an audience that was bursting at the seams.

“I was incredibly nervous but once we got out there and I got my first laugh I felt a lot better about it,” rookie cast member Delaney said. “It was so much fun and it was pretty incredible to see that many people come out for our first show.

Scatterbomb’s next show will be on Sept. 28.