Review

Consider Bevy the comedy equivalent of Title IX, the 1972 educational amendment that ensures gender equity in sports. They don't want to be treated any differently, they just want to show they've got game.  

"We've had audience members tell us they can't believe that women could be so hysterically funny," said Bevy coach Shelly Gossman. "We're just a strong group of funny people who all happen to be women."

The all-female group grew out of a training class at the ImprovOlympic. Though female enrollment is up at the comedy center, the nine women of Bevy saw the need to create a place where they could hone their craft. The fact that all of them were women was a bit of an after-thought. "It's not like any of us ever set out to be the  “Lifetime Channel of improv Comedy,"  said Bevy Member Erica May. 

The group's strength, Gossman insists, lies not in the fact they all share the same gender, but rather in their commitment to support one another as artists.

"They're the most supportive group I've worked with," she said.

"Nothing gets dropped or missed, and the whole really is bigger than the sum of its parts." Bevy member Niki Lindgren agrees. "If someone gets a good laugh, everyone is proud of it."

The decision to form a group was a lot easier than picking a name. "There were a whole bunch of other ideas that no one could agree on," May said. "Bevy was the Al Gore candidate. No one was crazy about it, but no one was offended, either.

The group practices long-form improvisation in which the audience is solicited for suggestions of any object, which the group then forms with their bodies onstage before breaking for a series of sketches based on, in or around the object. Any object is fair game and Bevy members play members of both genders in the scenes.

"There's a freedom in an all-girl group that you don't find in mixed groups," Lindgren said. "It's great not to have to play the female roles all the time."

Bevy performs at 10:30 p.m. on Sundays through June 1 in the cabaret theater of Im-prov-Olympic, 3541 N. Clark. Tickets are $5. Call (773) 880-0199.