I’ve not seen so much body paint in a room in a while, and this time, I’m contributing to it.

It’s PopRox’s Mr Halloween Bachelor at the Hannah Playhouse, a triumphant sequel to last year’s Ms Christmas Bachelorette, and the cast (and some of the audience) are fully costumed for a night of flirty frivolity and some of PopRox’s performance best. It’s hard not to be immediately wooed by the set dressing, featuring a giant tombstone, a massive spider’s web, and a dash too much theatrical haze. All very spooky and absolutely sets the scene for what’s to come.

Our MC for tonight is Satan (Dylan Hutton) – Lucifer, or “Lucy”, as dubbed by one of the contestants later on – who opens with a dance to Meat Loaf’s You Took the Words Right Outta My Mouth; quite camp, pseudo-Rocky Horror, very fun. I note that we’re wearing the same demonic tail and equivalent amounts of body paint. The audience shrieks. It’s a hell (heh) of an opening and suddenly, we’re all in the zone.

Frankenstein (“Franko” – Mo Munn) is our eligible bachelor for tonight, and too coated in a deep layer of green body paint. We meet his potential partners; the “Yummy Mummy” (Nina Hogg) – complete with faux lip filler and an accompanying vocal fry, Dracula (Jed Davies), definitely-a-human-and-not-a-werewolf Wilma (Millie Osborne), Aragog (Lesa McLeod-Whiting) – yes, that one, and Edward Cullen (Austin Harrison), through quick Love Island-style introduction and thus, the party starts.

Through several rounds of game playing and vignettes, Franko grows closer to the contestants. A round of “Behind the Gravestone” leaves Mo guessing the audience-suggested dates, with her pick of “tandem biking” leading to a scene where Franko and Edward bike to the Chocolate Fish Cafe (rest in peace?) with several references to a certain local bike tour guide leaving some of us in the audience giggling as we’re in on the joke, and Nina’s character out of the competition at the end of the first act.

We have an interval, I do not win the costume competition and do not fall down the Hannah’s staircase in my heels; so it goes.

At the top of act two, after some fabulous Phantom dramatic music by Lia Kelly on the keys, we pick the story up several weeks later. Franko is looking for love; though has definitely found lust from a very, very horny Wilma (Millie in her delightful, feral best).

We dart through skydiving, Dracula giving a blood donation, Transformers 2, and Edward Cullen’s fascination for climate change (my notes just read ‘Austin’s banger blood drinking Fortnite emote’ which I’m sure makes sense in some universe), before we come to our second elimination and say farewell to Edward Cullen, who was just too into climate activism to be dateable.

And thus, comes arguably one of PopRox’s most memorable games: “J’Accuzzi” – where the players bring an inflatable paddling pool onto stage, strip down to their characters’ togs, and accuse (j’accuse) each other of lying/various crimes/various hijinks, pouring water over each other’s heads if they’re found guilty. Improvising, combined with the weirdness of being in costume, in a pool, in front of an audience = it’s ridiculous, potentially revealing, but somehow, it works, furthering these characters, and giving us all a good giggle.

Dracula leaves the show after basically being water-tortured (lore-wise, vampires and water, yikes), and we’re left with two contestants for the final segment of the show: the Home Visits.

This segment in particular allows us to see more ridiculous (positive) character work from the PopRox players. As in line with the lore of Aragog, the giant spider from Harry Potter, we visit Hagrid (played with a very impressive impression by Jed) and Fang (the giant hound, played by Austin). The visit goes well, for the most part, and then we find ourselves with Wilma’s mother (played by Nina), who is not keen on Wilma getting with Franko, and encourages murder for… certain reasons.

What’s Halloween if not implying certain taboos really heavily, huh?

The show concludes with Wilma and Aragog singing for Franko’s love; with Wilma winning the overall show. The delightful new (very horny) couple hug, we all celebrate, and thus, this year’s episode of PopRox’s idiosyncratic dating shows is done.

The endearing joy of PopRox is that they’re consistently great. They’re improvisers who so clearly trust each other enough to push bounds and take performative risks, and those skills are no more obvious than in a show like this one, where they’re navigating complex character relationships, games and audience work, alongside complicated costumes.

Their improv never feels stilted or lost, and despite the constant need to play for gags in a delirious Halloween audience, wherever I look on stage there’s tiny little character moments happening, and fabulous one-liners being teed up. It’s sharp, witty, and well-performed work that welcomes in those new to improv, and those of us who’ve been a thousand times.

As their sold-out seasons across the last couple of years would attest, their schtick works, and I hope it’ll continue working for a long while yet.