Luge job

LETTER MEN Fake talk show host Mark Luge (center) is joined by his fake sidekick Amit (left) and fake band leader (with sweet fake mustache) Mr. T

Seth Weitberg considers Conan O'Brien brilliant for his ability to make an audience immediately fall in love with him. He thinks Jon Stewart is one of the best sit-down comics to have ever graced a television screen. Weitberg even remembers sitting in front of the TV in his footsie pajamas and admiring Johnny Carson, the king of late-night comedy, for being so classy.

But he considers himself capable of beating them at their own game.

"The late-night talk show has a format that's proven itself worthy as a way to design a really compact, interesting comedy show," he says. "But I was thinking, 'I know all these interesting people, and we could do a better job making one.'"

So the audacious Weitberg, a 24-year-old improviser and sketch comedian, put together a list of people he wanted to work with and asked them for help developing his kernel of an idea.

The group ordered pizzas and beer and hunkered down in the cramped apartment of Jordan Klepper, who had signed on to play host Mark Luge. They watched hour-after-hour of everything from Letterman, Leno and Conan to The Muppet Show. Together they hashed out what would become The Late Night Late Show, a mostly improvised live show that combines spot-on parody with moments of affectionate tribute to nocturnal gab fests.

The production—which began as a one-month experiment at Improv Olympic, but was recently extended indefinitely—attempts to convince audience members they're attending the taping of a live broadcast of a semi-popular late-night talk show. Luge sits at the main desk, and he's not exactly Carson-smooth: The fictitious host is a Paw Paw, Michigan, native with some skeletons in his closet, including an alcohol problem and an estranged wife.

Luge is joined by sidekick Amit Mahtaney (Weitberg), a recent immigrant from India who is thrilled about fulfilling his lifelong dream of moving to America. Sharing the stage is bandleader George Tsakalides (Jeremy Sosenko), a former child star in Greece who goes by the name Mr. T and is blissfully unaware of the bling-covered, mohawked '80s star who shares his moniker.

Performances ape the structure of a typical late-night taping, with a monologue, banter between the host and his band leader, a few desk bits (like Leno's wacky news items), a featured guest or two and sometimes a musical act to wrap it all up.

Unlike the sadly departed The Larry Sanders Show, the action here takes place onstage, not behind the scenes. And rather than just poking fun at the ripe-for-parody talk-show genre, the cast treats the formula as a starting point for a deeper level of comedy.

During one recent performance, Weitberg says, "We mapped the entire structure of Hamlet over our show." Of course, chances are no other Shakespeare adaptation has ever included ninjas hell-bent on exacting revenge upon a talk show host's sidekick—not because he killed their father, but because he had eaten all the muffins from their dressing room.

The performers also try their hands at late-night staples. "I get a kick out of doing things that spoof late-night shows. At the same time, I find myself getting into the conventions," Sosenko says. "I get excited about writing monologue jokes."

And when guests take the stage, the kidding pretty much stops. "Having guests who have interesting lives and can sit and answer real questions about themselves does a great job of grounding our show," Sosenko says.

"We're within this very interesting artistic community," Klepper adds, referring to Chicago's literature, art, theater and music scenes. "We wanted actual guests to come on so we could learn about them."

Thus far, guests on the show have been locals involved in fascinating but relatively small-scale projects, like Jason Bitner, editor of Dirty Found magazine, and Arthur Jones, an animator who shows his short films in local galleries.

But the show has higher aspirations, according to director Sarah Haskins. "As a group, we can get people who are bigger than 'this neat friend of ours, '"she says. "But so far, 'this neat friend' has made for some pretty good shows."

And what about the performers' own aspirations? After all, Andy Richter, Conan O'Brien's former sidekick, cut his teeth at the ImprovOlympic.

"Whether or not it shines on a resume, the experience of having to put up a new show every week is invaluable," Weitberg says. "If NBC came knocking on our door, of course we'd jump on it. But this is great for now."The Late Night Late Show continues its open run Saturday at midnight at ImprovOlympic.