It’s improv. It’s a game show. It’s delight­ful chaos. It’s The Sabo­teur. 

Off the back of sold-out sea­sons in the NZ Improv Fes­ti­val in 2019 and in Mel­bourne in 2020, The Sabo­teur is just over an hour’s worth of improv chaos as a part of this year’s Com­e­dy Fest.

Five impro­vi­sors, one of which is try­ing to sab­o­tage the show from with­in. Can you guess the sabo­teur? I cer­tain­ly could­n’t, though my the­atre-going com­pan­ion could. Using a clev­er­ly-made web­site and our smart­phones, the audi­ence could vote on who they thought the sabo­teur was. In the end, only 26% of us got it right. I was­n’t one of them.

With a rotat­ing cast — and of course, it’s improv — you’re not going to get the same show every night. Across about an hour and a quar­ter, five impro­vis­ers (last night’s show was Ste­vie Han­cox-Monk, Clare Ker­ri­son, Jen O’Sul­li­van, Lyn­don Hood and Wire­mu Tuhi­wai) are led through a series of improv games by the host (Jim Fish­wick), as they com­pete to win our hearts.

From mimed moments about soup, per­form­ing scenes in only a spe­cif­ic num­ber of words, dra­mat­ic retellings of their first kiss­es, and much more — these per­form­ers are incred­i­ble at what they do and leave the audi­ence in hys­ter­ics, despite the 10pm start time.

Though the show feels a lit­tle too stuck in its for­mat at times, and almost a smidge too expo­si­tion­al (?), it’s delight­ful­ly fun and won­der­ful­ly unpre­dictable. I think some of the most enjoy­able moments come from the tru­ly bizarre — three per­form­ers mak­ing a scene across three sep­a­rate and unre­lat­ed gen­res at once comes to mind here.

The Sabo­teur is the fab­u­lous cher­ry on the top of a stacked Com­e­dy Fest pro­gramme. Check it out at BATS from now until Sat­ur­day the 22nd of May 2021.