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.