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Show: Showstopper! The improvised musical
Society: Edinburgh Festival Fringe
Venue: Pleasance One
Credits: The Showstoppers
Type: Sardines
Author: Chris Abbott
Performance Date: 10/08/2015
Showstopper! The Improvised Musical
Chris Abbott | 11 Aug 2015 09:51am
Now in their eighth year on the Fringe, the Showstoppers are still capable of stunning their audiences by the speed with which they can improvise around a title, a genre and a musical style. Co-founder Dylan Emery begins the show by interrupting his phone call to Cameron Mackintosh in order to ask the audience to give him ideas for the concept he is attempting to sell.
Tonight, the audience comes up with four possible contexts: a Texas Gay Bar, Australia Zoo, Molly Malone’s Irish Pub or a Missing Aircraft Mystery. A quick audience vote results in a narrow victory for the Irish Pub setting, and the audience are then asked what musical styles should be involved. This results in a list including Avenue Q, Little Shop of Horrors, Lion King, Bernstein, Cabaret and Irish Heavy Metal…
Of course, before the show can begin it needs a title, and puns prove impossible to avoid – so “Guinness a Kiss” it is. The cast includes the other founder of Showstopper, Adam Meggido, and five others from the Showstopper squad, and they burst onstage and go straight into an opening number in Molly’s pub, haunted by the figure of Stinking Mary.
As regulars will know, Dylan Emery stops the action at various points to send the cast off in another direction, introduce a new musical genre or to signal a plot development. It is all uproarious fun as well as being incredibly skilled; the talents of the group, however, are such that they can make it all look so easy.
They are supported throughout, of course, by some very talented and equally improvisatory musicians, the three on this occasion also drawn from a large group of regulars.
As with all the best improvisation shows, this is an event you can go back to again and again, and see a new show every time; in many ways, the ideal venue for the later hours of a long day on the Fringe.
Let us hope their plans for a West End run in the Autumn turn out well, and that the joyful atmosphere at the Pleasance can make the transition to a London venue.
- : admin
- : 10/08/2015