On Theater:

Improvisational comedy is a breed apart, requiring a special kind of talent. You may not have to undergo the mental exhaustion of memorizing lines, but you must be particularly facile upstairs, ready to tackle anything your fellow players — or the audience — might throw at you.

An excellent example of what its practitioners call “improv” is being offered through July 24 — or longer if demand persists — at Huntington Beach’s Old World German Restaurant. Here the Corporate Recess Players, chameleons of comedy, hold forth each Friday evening.

The performers are a 10-person ensemble, ostensibly headed by Brenda Glim, though the leadership duties are interchangeable. Their primary topic is “Revenge of the Unemployed” (or, what you wish you had said before they laid you off), but that’s only one of the lively skits offered in a 90-minute set.

The evening begins with a warmup of sorts, a series of “freeze” segments, brief depictions of instantaneous situations that change instantly when one member of the cast “tags” another and introduces a new topic. The main theme, corporate layoffs, is augmented by occupations supplied by the audience.

There’s a particularly ambitious offering titled “A Day in the Life,” in which the players bring one audience member on stage, garner quick details about his or her typical day, then act it out with comedic relish, becoming spouses, co-workers, customers or pets, depending on the information garnered.

“Vacation Slides” are a series of blackouts as two players describe their recent holiday trips as three others act them out, outrageously. Occupations (supplied by the audience) are depicted using various television genres.

The funniest, and most creative, skit of the night involves “movies with subtitles.”

Here, two players supply the dialogue as two others mime the actions. The least effective is “Liars’ Club,” where four players define words only those grade school kids in the spelling bees would recognize, only one definition being correct.

One particularly inventive moment involves drawings submitted prior to the show by audience members. Here, two players (Joe Montanari and Wendy Rogers) take words provided by two people in the crowd (in one case, “serious” and “putty”) and apply them to the drawings, which they then try to promote as consumer “products.”

Glim, Montanari and Rogers are joined by fellow improv-ers Byron Spears, Knoa Knapper, Mark Margolis, Jo McLachlan, Paul Knox, Pablo Hernandez and Michelle Margolis in this tight-knit ensemble. All are quick-witted, inventive and often hilarious.

To obtain reservations for this inventive Friday night funfest, call the Old World restaurant at (714) 895-8020.

If You Go

WHAT: Corporate Recess Players

WHERE: Old World German Restaurant, 7561 Center Ave., Huntington Beach

WHEN: 8 p.m. Fridays through July 24

COST: $15

CALL: (714) 895-8020

TOM TITUS reviews local theater for the Independent.