I saw four improv shows last night as part of the New Zealand Improv Fes­ti­val. In the inter­ests of brevi­ty, here’s a joint review of all four.

Austen Found 

Pen­ny Ash­ton’s Austen Found is a per­am­bu­la­tion into the world of one of Jane Austen’s lost musi­cals — in this case, the sto­ry of one Vic­to­ria Sandy­bot­tom, who is in des­per­ate need of a hus­band. Pick­ings, how­ev­er, are short — she is oblig­ed to choose between Colonel Smidget (sp??) — who unfor­tu­nate­ly had an illic­it encounter with a woman in France and is thus out­cast when his secret is revealed — and the vil­lage’s Vic­ar, who has an unfor­tu­nate ten­den­cy towards overt creepi­ness.

(She end­ed up with the Vic­ar.)

Jane Austen put to music is cer­tain­ly rather enter­tain­ing. I thor­ough­ly enjoyed the song between Vic­to­ria (Ash­ton) and her best friend Deirdre (Lori Dungey) where the two women spec­u­lat­ed about what it would be like to kiss their hus­bands once they got mar­ried — com­plete with a whole world’s worth of gig­gling.

If I’m tru­ly hon­est, I did hope that the two women would end up togeth­er — con­sid­er­ing the unfor­tu­nate pick­ings in the town and my tremu­lous ship­ping heart — but this is Austen, after all, and that did not come to pass.

In all, Austen Found was slick­ly impro­vised, with fab­u­lous dick jokes, and some very well-exe­cut­ed songs. Lots and lots of fun.

Love Isth­mus: Dystopia Edi­tion

Chris­tine Brooks’ Love Isth­mus is a tru­ly bizarre and apoc­a­lyp­tic hour of improv, styled heav­i­ly off the Love Island tele­vi­sion show (or so I’m told).

“The water is get­ting high­er, the isth­mus is get­ting nar­row­er. Suc­cess means true love and sal­va­tion. Elim­i­na­tion means death. The pow­er is in your hands.” Eight peo­ple are dragged from the Ash­es of civ­i­liza­tion and giv­en the chance to live in the Clois­ters — a sliv­er of civ­i­liza­tion untouched by dev­as­ta­tion. How­ev­er, only two peo­ple from that group can make it into the Clois­ters — the two peo­ple who can hon­est­ly fall in love with each oth­er — and con­vince the audi­ence of such — in around about 45 min­utes. Those who the audi­ence vote out get mur­dered by loom­ing guards, and the whole thing is a bit of a night­mare.

Love Isth­mus was an incred­i­bly unique premise for an improv show, but fell slight­ly flat because it did­n’t push the enve­lope quite far enough. Though the set­ting was dystopi­an — the Clois­ters’ Emper­or watched on from the audi­ence and the whole thing was very Hunger Games, it did­n’t real­ly lean into the dark­ness of some of the moments.

What real­ly became excit­ing was when the show broke away from its episod­ic mold — Leo, the crowd favourite — broke free from the guards try­ing to kill him and stabbed the Emper­or to death. We all rose up as one and start­ed cheer­ing for him — his char­ac­ter had grown from a few intro lines to some­one who we could actu­al­ly care about.

It would be inter­est­ing to see Love Isth­mus with a few more of those moments of rebel­lion — though we, as the audi­ence, are ‘priv­i­leged mem­bers of the Clois­ters’ — what sort of char­ac­ters and moments could make us want to fight for those on the out­side?

The Great­est Show

Aman­da Buck­ley and Wire­mu Tuhi­wai’s The Great­est Show pulls back the cur­tains on the Big Top and lets us into the final night of a trav­el­ling cir­cus, mere hours before they go out and per­form their final show as a com­pa­ny togeth­er. It’s a mas­sive ensem­ble piece, with a lot of danc­ing, some fan­tas­tic singing, and all the glit­ter one could ever want.

Buck­ley and Tuhi­wai led us through the show as the MC and the CM respec­tive­ly, who were both try­ing to deal with the fact that their show (and their lives togeth­er) were about to be over. They kept every­thing at a good pace, light­ened moments when they got too dark, and had fan­tas­tic ener­gy togeth­er. (The sur­prise pro­pos­al between the char­ac­ters at the end was very sweet as well!)

We had Susie — the beard­ed woman — sing her tale, as well as Vladimir (a giant Russ­ian man), a fire-breather, a con­tor­tion­ist and a whole host of oth­er eso­teric char­ac­ters. While it would have been nice to have a slight devi­a­tion from this mold of sto­ry telling — to see the ensem­ble do more pieces togeth­er would have been nice — the whole show felt very gen­uine and had a love­ly heart at its core.

Playshop DEAD!

Playshop’s spooky Hal­loween-themed show­case was MC’ed by Sam Irwin — who gal­li­vant­ed around the stage giv­ing out lol­lies to the audi­ence and the impro­vis­ers — and helmed by Playshop’s usu­al team — as well as a few spe­cial NZIF guests.

George Fenn also loomed behind the audi­ence, dressed as Jig­saw (from the Saw films), and occa­sion­al­ly imposed penance upon the impro­vis­ers.  Austin Har­ri­son — in full regalia as a spooky skele­ton — was made to spend all a lot of his scenes on the floor, while Jen O’Sul­li­van had to per­form as San­ta Claus (in Octo­ber).

The evening cul­mi­nat­ed in Jig­saw drag­ging Jen off to Improv Hell for flout­ing one of his rules.

 

In all, a very good night indeed.