Although there weren’t as many impromptu makeout sessions or sock chants as there has been in years past, this year’s Ward Melville Players’ Improv Show, Heroes vs. Villains, was undoubtedly a big hit.

A two-night event, the cast included the heroes: captain Jack “Undecided” Harkins, Charlie “Andrew Spoleti” Harkins, George “Capeman” Kuhen, and Steven “Meatball Hero” Fontana, and the villains: captain Aurelia “Stinker” Masters, Hunter “Herobrine” Pszybylski, Donny “Doofenshmirtz” Anderson, and Joe “Billie Eilish” Stimel. 

The format of the show resembled an episode of the improv show “Whose Line Is It Anyway?” where actors play a series of improv games. Throughout the Ward Melville improv show’s two nights, “Cut to,” “Late for Work,” “Four Corners,” and “Scenes from a Hat,” were among the games that got the biggest laughs.

According to Olivia Donnelly, who saw the Thursday show where the villains won, “the most iconic thing was Jack and Charlie Harkins’ bit when they did ‘Cut To’ and Jack was Charlie’s foot doctor and ended up taking off Charlie’s shoes and socks and making a sock puppet.”

In the ‘Cut To’ game, actors play out a scene, but throughout it they must cut to different moments in time. Thursday night, foot doctor Jack Harkins was taking off patient Charlie’s shoes and socks, but the cut-to scene showed him stealing the sock to make a puppet out of it. It then cut back to the original scene, where we found Jack lying about the stolen sock to Charlie.

Aleena Siddiqui, who saw the Friday show where the heroes won claims, “the most iconic part was when they did the lights changing to different emotions because it is very difficult to show real emotion in a setting where that feeling is inappropriate because not only is it comical for the audience, but also the actors… the actors did such a terrific job considering it was on the spot,” Siddiqui said, referring to the game Colors, where two actors play out a normal scene, but as the stage lights shift to different colors, the mood of the scene must shift along with the colors. Blue symbolized sadness, red was anger, pink was lust, etc. 

Rebekka Dill, who also saw the Friday show, decided after much deliberation that the most iconic part was “when they acted out Gordon Ramsey and the lamb sauce.”

Other notable bits were the Thursday night Interrogation game, where Pszybylski played Ariel, the Little Mermaid, who was being interrogated for a hit-and-run on Players alum Andrew Spoleti and the Friday night Four Corners game, where Charlie Harkins played an old grandpa trying to use a self-driving car.

The Players will have their next performance, A Charlie Brown Christmas, on December 20th.