The lights go down and a spotlight on a creepy hand moving in circular motion from just behind the curtain could easily make you think you’ve just been dragged into a circus. Yet curiosity might just be enough of a reason to not giggle at what’s happening on stage.

Without any sort of formal introduction, fanfare, celebrity hype or rich uncles, Northwestern graduate Matt Sax has burst onto the musical and theatrical scene with a show so creative it will redefine how these two genres interact.

In a performance that normally takes a group of professionally trained actors, singers, dancers and writers, Sax has managed to create and star in Clay, a "one man hip-hop musical," with such success that it easily dwarfs a production with ten times the man power.

Fans used to the imaginative adaptations and stunning physicality of Lookingglass Theatre's shows may be somewhat flummoxed by its current offering. As one patron said afterward: "What was that all about?"

Reviewing and recommending improv comedy is not unlike reviewing and recommending the weather. We can tell you exactly what it was like yesterday, but that’s no guarantee you can plan your weekend around it. It is fair to say, though, that what Joey Slotnick and Lauren Katz are up to in this 90-minute improv set comes with a pretty good insurance policy; they’re funny, their chemistry is synergistic, and if a scene they’re in starts to creak, they quickly and organically reposition themselves in a new scenario.

Whatever you do, please don't mention this article to Lauren Katz or Joey Slotnick.

I felt guilty enough having interviewed them for it. Who knows what reading it might do to their concentration? Those two need to stay focused.

Slotnick and Katz are the entire cast of "Wants and Needs," which opens at Lookingglass Theatre on Saturday. Subtitled "An Improvised Exploration of Life in the Land of Plenty," the show is entirely unscripted.

Lookingglass Theatre is all about experimentation. Imaginative adaptations, stunning physicality, creative sets. Nothing is out of the company's reach when it comes to putting their own particular touch on productions that are some of the more creative on the local theater scene.

Raymond Fox, who conceived the ambitious new Lookingglass Theatre adaptation of "The Old Curiosity Shop," has a deliciously Dickensian demeanor. Handsome in a Victorian kind of way, Fox has a perpetually furrowed brow, an earnest, slightly strained voice and melancholy eyebrows. So when this actor-writer starts to tell us the sad tale of Little Nell Trent, we're sucked back to the imaginative world of Charles Dickens as surely as when, at Christmas, we hear the immortal line "Marley was dead, to begin with."