A Vancouver TheatreSports League production. At the Improv Centre, Granville Island, on Saturday, July 13. Continues Thursdays to Saturdays until August 17

With The Amazing Race Canada just getting under way on TV, the Vancouver TheatreSports League has borrowed the format for its latest parody presentation, The Amazing Improv Race.

As in all VTSL parodies, the conceit is secondary to the improv. Each show stands or falls on the strength of the actors’ agile minds. For that reason, I’ve never seen a complete dud at the Improv Centre on Granville Island or either of the League’s former locations. Every performance is full of laughs, even (and sometimes especially) when things go sideways.

But does this particular concept work? Margret Nyfors, who created the show and acts as host, introduces us to three teams who go through a series of challenges around the world (of our imagination). Each team has a back story: on this night, Taz VanRassel and Lauren McGibbon met on Christianmingle.com, and Ellen Kennedy and Scott Patey were a mother-son pairing, while Graeme Duffy and Dan Dumsha were motivational speakers from California. From there, the audience supplied locales based on their backgrounds. And with a six-pack of beer on the line, you knew the competitors would give it their all.

Fun so far. And it continued to be fun, even though most of the scenes had only a tangential, at best, connection to the make-believe location. In “Bali”, Patey and Kennedy engaged in a dance competition that ended with Patey in a metallic-looking jumpsuit voguing to “I’m Too Sexy”. Just like they do in Indonesia, I guess. Still, really funny, but it would have been hilarious in any of VTSL’s six other shows.

In one detour scene, each team had to select between night and day before being given their challenge. The resulting scene didn’t seem to correspond to either. (Quick, do the following correspond to night or day? A TED Talks–type lecture, cooking, and a soap opera.) It might have felt less arbitrary had we been informed of the alternative challenge in each case.

But again, the acting is what makes or breaks it, and the performers were all pros. VanRassel, Duffy, and Kennedy were all perfect in their roles. And it was great to see three cast members I’d never seen on the VTSL stage before in McGibbon, Patey, and Dumsha. The winner of the six-pack was the team of Duffy and Dumsha, but Patey might have stolen the show with both his sexy dance and, later, a two-minute, one-person synopsis of the movie Titanic.

That particular act-out didn’t take place in England, Ireland, France, New York, or even Newfoundland, all legitimately tied to the doomed passenger liner. Nope, this challenge was in “Poland”. See what I mean? But what the hell—it’s comedy, not geography.