Showstopper! The Improvised Musical (Tour – Salford)
Improvisation tests the extent to which performers can cope without a script or rehearsal and respond to events whilst maintaining a coherent and hopefully entertaining narrative. The technique can be adversarial and cause the performers to try and up-stage one another or self-indulgent and result in them entertaining themselves rather than the audience.
Co-directors Dylan Emery and Adam Meggido (who also perform) ensure that Showstopper! avoids such selfishness and delivers a relentlessly funny evening. Sean McCann is, in effect, the taskmaster who sets out the rules of the improvisation and specifies the manner in which the work must be performed. He plays the hapless writer who is faced with ruin when fear of litigation from Elvis’ estate leads to the cancellation of his musical Blue Suede Soles.
Stuck for ideas McCann is forced to come up with a musical based upon suggestion from the audience about theme and musical style. At The Lowry the diverse musical styles were delivered by the versatile Chris Ash on keyboards and included Rogers and Hammerstein, Andrew Lloyd Webber, Richard O’ Brien, Abba and the Lion King.
The plot involves lovers Emily (Ruth Bratt) and Gavron (Nigel Pilkington) who face more than the usual obstacles to their happiness. She is promised to Lord Faversham. Phillip Pellew and Gavron belong to a tribe of communist vampires who live in an abandoned asylum under Lake Windermere .You can tell that a committee plotted “To Bleed or Not to Bleed.”
From such unpromising material the cast deliver a show that not only has a beginning, middle and an end but also one that fulfils all of the suggestions put forward by the audience. Meggido is particularly good on the developing the narrative turning the vague suggestion of ‘red vampires’ into a political doctrine. Bratt is charmingly incapable of maintaining a straight face but comes up with a denouement that both surprises and amuses the rest of the cast. Her air of innocence sends up the whole play as she remarks on the unusual size of her family’s living room.
The music works very well. Lloyd Webber is close to parody in any case so that “Listen to the Voices”, the lovers’ duet between Bratt and Pilkington, seems entirely natural. It is made all the more amusing by a Phantom figure steering a boat in the background. Good though this is, the best song, if only because it is a surprise that it could be done at all, is Pellew’s “The Carvery Knife” delivered in the style of the Lion King.
The actions are also improvised is accordance with instructions from McCann. A ruckus at a wedding is performed in slow motion leading to a wonderfully distorted declaration of love: “Eee tha’s a bonnie lass.” McCann irons out any errors that pop up – when Meggido fluffs a line he explains that vampires cannot pronounce the names of humans and, when the wrong name is used, that they have a different name during the day than at night. This thoughtfulness is offset by requiring a speech to be delivered in iambic pentameter or the stage be cleared in 15 seconds.
It is a pleasant surprise to me that improvisation can be maintained for such an extended period and that Showstopper! is able to delight and charm as well as being very funny indeed. Hilarious with spot-on spoofs, this is as good a night out as you can have in a theatre.
– Dave Cunningham
