Reviewed by Rebec­ca Stub­bing.

Fri­day the 13th was the per­fect occa­sion for NO SLEEP, a joy­ful­ly chaot­ic improv show pre­sent­ed at this year’s New Zealand Improv Fes­ti­val.

The show began at 9:30pm on the won­der­ful Stage at BATS The­atre, and the slight­ly sleepy audi­ence were imme­di­ate­ly reas­sured by the per­form­ers not to wor­ry, we were all here at the the­atre for a sleep­over and we could now chill out in the com­pa­ny of friends.

Vic­to­ria Mae Wat­son Sepe­jak and Chan­tal Lim have trav­elled all the way from Toron­to, Cana­da to present their dou­ble-act show here in Pōneke, adding some inter­na­tion­al flair to the line­up of the Improv Fes­ti­val. The pair made a jaun­ty entrance to the stage wear­ing cosy look­ing pyja­mas and opened the show by declar­ing how tired they were.

Improv fans will be no stranger to the for­mat of their show, which involved Lim and Sepe­jak tak­ing turns telling true mono­logues, and then per­form­ing scenes inspired by the mono­logue. Per­haps it’s their Cana­di­an improv train­ing, or per­haps it was the fact that it was, as they declared, “4:30am our
time”, but the scenes were ener­getic, play­ful, and not like any improv I’ve seen before.

They tru­ly lived up to the promise of a fun sleep­over with friends, as the con­nec­tion between Lim and Sepe­jak shone through the whole per­for­mance. They were extreme­ly in tune with one anoth­er, and would pick up on small moments of com­e­dy with­in scenes, and draw them out into longer
games. As an audi­ence mem­ber at an improv show, the vibes between per­form­ers are always real­ly key to your enjoy­ment of the show, and the real-life friend­ship between this pair was evi­dent through­out and pro­vid­ed the warm heart of the show.

Even in the scene in which they played a moth­er and daugh­ter who kept prank­ing each oth­er with ketchup into think­ing the oth­er was ter­ri­bly
injured, some­how Lim and Sepe­jak kept the audi­ence on their side.

For a show with only two per­form­ers on stage, they did well to fill up the space, util­is­ing the back doors, the stairs, and even crawl­ing all around the ground at var­i­ous points in the show. As the halfway mark was passed, you could see the jet-lag start­ing to set­tle in a lit­tle bit, with both Lim and Sepe­jak start­ing to acci­den­tal­ly walk into the wood­en box­es on stage with increas­ing
fre­quen­cy. They cov­ered up each one either in-world or by break­ing the 4th wall and bring­ing the audi­ence in on the joke. The box­es end­ed up being almost the third per­former in the show.

All in all, NO SLEEP was exact­ly what you’re look­ing for in a late night improv show. It was fun, it was sil­ly, and it was all about friend­ship.