Yellow Springs-based funny guys Charlie Cromer, Elliot Cromer and Adam Zaremsky will perform approximately 12 comedic vignettes in their forthcoming “Smaller and Worse: A Nonsense Show” at the Foundry Theater at Antioch College, Thursday–Saturday, Aug. 14–16. The askew trio is pictured here ... being silly. (Sumbitted photo)
Local funny guys at it again in ‘Smaller and Worse: A Nonsense Show’
- Published: August 12, 2025
A superintelligent dog saves the world. Actors playing actors explore their higher consciousness. Bonds of brotherhood and friendship are tested — wait, in this era of ironic detachment? Hold on, are vegetables even real?
These and other absurd premises are the bases of a host of comedic vignettes to be performed by Yellow Springs-based funny guys Adam Zaremsky, Charlie Cromer and Elliot Cromer next week.
Titled “Smaller and Worse: A Nonsense Show,” the trio’s sketch comedy performances will take the boards of the Antioch College Foundry Theater’s experimental stage Thursday–Saturday, Aug. 14–16. Admission is $18 and doors open at 6:30 p.m. each night, and the PG-13 shows begin at 7 p.m.
That’s right: For the fourth time, the homegrown boys are back in town for another slate of wild-and-wacky, over-the-top sketches — this time under the auspices of “smaller and worse” to succeed their “bigger and better” performances of their past runs.
What? It’ll be smaller and worse?
“Listen, we all know what ‘good’ looks like, right?” Charlie Cromer quipped in an interview with the News last week.
“Those so-called ‘good’ things all adhere to certain rules, and for something to be ‘great,’ then it has to excel in recognizable ways,” Cromer said. “But there are an almost infinite number of ways something can be worse and bad.”
In their dozen or so sketches, the trio aims to plumb that bottomless pit of comedic possibility.
Cromer added that amid all the artificially generated slop in the digital world, next week’s performances will be “uniquely human.” With the bar for modern entertainment being “pullled down so low to the ground,” Cromer said, his troupe’s so-daned “smaller and worse” performances will, in fact, exceed low expectations — the very ones the trio intentionally set.
“Humans are bad and full of foibles and ‘goof-em-ups,’” Cromer said with a cheshire grin. “And that’s what we’re bringing to the table. This is about humanity!”
Zaremsky chimed in: “Right! Comedy is watching somebody else slip on the banana peel.”
The Cromer boys and Zaremsky aim to dole out those and other peels en masse.
Alongside the trio will be live music from The Boogie Bros, a motley crew of musicians featuring the likes of local hooligans Brendan Moore (band leader/bass), Isaac Haller (drums), Eric Rudolf (guitar), Nathaniel Reed (keyboard) and Ike Pouliot as a stagehand.
The origins of The Boogie Bros is long, winding and often convoluted. Elliot Cromer and Zaremsky previously told the News in 2022 that the group had amassed over a rousing game of Bananagrams in a rough-and-tumble New Orleans bar; in 2024, the pair claimed to have been pilots who rescued the Bros from beneath a crate of bananas. Since then, the story has changed.
“So, when Charlie and I were growing up,” Elliot Cromer said, “our parents would take us to British Columbia a lot, and back then, I had this rattle. A really big rattle”
“Yeah, that’s right. He was still into rattles even as a 5-year-old,” Charlie Cromer said. “But man, could he really carry a beat.”
One fateful day, when the Cromer brothers were stuck in “the infamous British Columbia traffic” with their folks, a wayward Rastafarian named Nathaniel Reed knocked on the Cromer family’s car window, and inquired about the younger Cromer’s rattling.
“Hey look at that rattle, mon!” Reed exclaimed, and the seeds for the band were sown. The beat went on.
Then, following Eric Rudolf’s skydiving accident; Brendan Moore’s harrowing exploration of the lost city of Atlantis; and Isaac Haller’s subterranean explosion into the group’s band rehearsal, when he had burrowed through the earth with nothing but a map to Albuquerque and a prayer — The Boogie Bros were formed.
At least, that’s how the Cromer brothers and Zaremsky remember it.
“Hey, look it up on Wikipedia, man. It’s all there,” Charlie Cromer said.
All jokes aside, the Cromers and Zarmesky welcome one and all to their “nonsense show” at the Foundry next weekend. They say it’ll be a chance to escape the doldrums of the day and age, and it may even stir up a chuckle or two.
“This is a great opportunity to support your local freaks and your local weirdos in doing what they love,” Elliot Cromer said. “It’s the freaks and the weirdos who make life worth living. It’s important to expose yourself to those people and their art.”
Zaremsky added: “And because everything else feels smaller and worse right now, it’s never been more important to find the joy in life — to get together with your community and laugh at the absurdity of human existence.”
“Smaller and Worse: A Nonsense Show” runs at the Foundry Theater at Antioch College Thursday–Saturday, Aug. 14–16. Tickets can be purchased at the door or beforehand at http://www.bit.ly/45cBguU.
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