With a dash of insan­i­ty, a smidge of ridicu­lous­ness, and a lot of Welling­ton­ian wit, Base­Jump Improv’s new show The Blender is a wild ride for your Sun­day evening.

We don’t tend to see Sun­days as a ‘going to the­atre day’ but with a show run­ning at rough­ly forty-five min­utes long, this piece is eas­i­ly man­age­able between wal­low­ing in sad­ness, recov­er­ing from a hang­over (as I was) or what­ev­er else you do on a Sun­day evening.

The Blender cast (last night it was Lesa McLeod-Whit­ing, Dun­can Ballinger, Tris­tram Dom­i­can, Tony Yuile, Tim Croft, Jonothan Man­de­no and Jamie Hoare) takes true sto­ries by notable Welling­to­ni­ans and impro­vis­es pieces from them.

Our sto­ry­teller of the evening was Kate Spencer, known in Welling­ton for her poet­ry. She told us three unique sto­ries — about mas­tur­ba­tion poet­ry, diar­rhea in Chi­na, and get­ting robbed when trav­el­ling — and then the excel­lent team of impro­vis­ers cre­at­ed utter mani­cism around them. While the con­tent was slight­ly bluer than I antic­i­pat­ed for a Sun­day evening, it was a fun ride and not at all what I was expect­ing.

Want to know how the artist inside you is con­nect­ed to one of the sto­ries above? Well, you’ll just have to see the show.

(Obvi­ous­ly it’s improv, so that exact top­ic is nev­er going to come up again, but that’s why you need to be there in per­son to wit­ness it.)

One won­ders if a slight chance to the show’s for­mat — per­haps short­en­ing the sto­ries told and length­en­ing the impro­vis­ing from them — would add more of a sense of pace to the over­all piece, but oth­er­wise, The Blender is a damn fun show and very much worth com­ing out for on a wet Sun­day night.

It’s per­formed at the Scruffy Bun­ny Improv The­atre, a great new improv venue in Welling­ton that lies with­in the Read­ing Courte­nay com­plex. Though it may not be quite what you’re expect­ing of a the­atre, the place has a wide range of improv acts, and the tick­et prices aren’t ridicu­lous­ly steep either.

Hit up the Base­Jump web­site for more details about their shows and class­es.