Paul Merton & Suki Webster's Improv Show
Audience and improvisers collided and gelled creating a chaos of original and unrepeatable comedy in the way that makes improv such a fresh and endlessly entertaining form.
Norwich Arts Centre
A trip to a dinosaur park, an in-depth interview on sloth archery and a new motto for Norwich were among the hilarious and unpredictable moments in a night with some of the UK’s leading improv comedy stars at Epic Studios.
Four chairs and a keyboard provided the minimal setup for a night of maximum laughter as comedy couple Paul Merton and Suki Webster led a night of impromptu entertainment along with fellow improvisers Mike McShane and Charlotte Gittins with Richard Baker providing musical accompaniment.
The show featured a variety of games and songs pushing the performers’ ability to think on the spot to the limit. It was a format familiar to viewers of Whose Line Is It Anyway? a show which, in its early days, featured a young and somewhat bashful Paul Merton. While the Have I got News For You star might have been the most familiar name on the lineup, all the performers were at the top of their game raising laughs and not being fazed for a moment by the unpredictable twists and turns the show took them on.
The sixth member of the cast was the audience who shaped the show with a wild variety of suggestions to initiate scenes. The show opened with a Sherlock Holmes story that all the performers told between them. They took over the narration without missing a beat, often mid-sentence and sometimes even mid-word. Audience members showed no mercy on Paul when called upon to come up with an unusual job for him to guess: Stealing odd socks and using them to dry tofu on a washing line on Whitsun. The rest of the cast were ingenious in their attempts to give clues leading to this bizarre profession with Paul being hindered by his inability to count to three in German!
Improv comedy comes in many forms and the cast were equally comfortable and adept in creating instant sketches, making up songs and switching emotions or genre according to the whims of the audience. After being handed sloth archery as an unlikely Olympic sport Mike immediately launched into a confident interview with Paul and Suki who proved surprisingly expert in the field though they had a slightly easier job as they were playing one interviewee speaking one word at a time.
Richard Baker was always ready to add musical embellishments and accompany whole improvised songs including lost Eurovision entries from Finland and Moldova about falling in love with a man who collects geese and a visit to the opticians.
The first half closed with a genre jumping scene set in a hairdressers including gangster, horror, a perfect parody of Gilbert and Sullivan and culminating in an operatic finale.
Having proved themselves unshakable, the cast put themselves even further into the hands of the audience in the second half - quite literally in one shoe shop based scene in which Paul and Charlotte could only be moved by a volunteer who rose admirably to the task of human puppeteer.
Richard deftly jumped musical genres in a scene about a date in a cemetery with Mike and Suki singing rock and bluegrass numbers before a gospel style showstopper about genitalia, in which the two performers sounded like born preachers. The cast even took on Shakespeare with a short comedy worthy of the Bard, though loaded with modern references: “Say thou doest not work for Ryanair.”
Paul and Suki brought the show to a close in a scene mainly written collectively by the audience. In a scene starting with the prompt: “too many garden gnomes” the pair randomly read lines written by audience members during the interval including: “Bring me the vibrator and the gravy”; That’s normal for Norfolk”; “He’s never eaten trifle on the top deck of the bus”; “ride me cowboy”; Norwich’s new motto: “I need some fresh underwear” and “why would you even go to Ipswich?” It wasn’t quite seamless but the duo incorporated them all and managed a few sharp lines themselves: “Have you ever been to Diss?”
“No, but I’ve been to Dat!”
Audience and improvisers collided and gelled creating a chaos of original and unrepeatable comedy in the way that makes improv such a fresh and endlessly entertaining form. The good news for those who enjoyed the sellout show is there is a thriving local improv scene with Intellectual Hooligans and Dogface Improv running regular shows, jams and courses in the city.
