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.