Improv is a tough gig for a new company when there are no familiar routines to fall into that won’t fail to bring home the laughs. Insert Laughter Here don’t have the luxury of set narratives and tried and tested partnerships. Some of their Spin-a-Play goes swimmingly, but too often the seven performers find themselves swimming upstream.
Of course, practice makes perfect and there is a great deal of potential in their show for the Camden Fringe and the Museum of Comedy’s performance space is packed. Insert Laughter Here must act out an hour-long play, the genre of which is decided with the help of a wheel and audience suggestions. To be sure, it’s not a very original way to approach Improv and the organisation of the scenario seems to take ages, draining away the initial energy.
Aaron Weight’s company also make things hard for themselves by allowing so many different theatrical genres to be added to the wheel. Indeed, the audience struggles to come up with enough genres to fit all the available segments of the wheel. The sheer number of possibilities increases the chance of the company floundering. They cannot have rehearsed every genre. There’s a logistical reason that other successful Improv companies stick to one genre such as Murder Mystery or CSI Investigations. Tonight, the seven performers seem quite unprepared when Period Drama is selected by the wheel.
Somehow we find ourselves in the Regency Period of 1595 where sugar is no longer a rarefied luxury: don’t expect historical accuracies in this show. The early scene setting is a little laborious as the performers try to find their places in the story before they find the humour. However, it’s a credit to everyone on stage that eventually the comedy appears, helped in no small way by the partisan audience who fully know the rules of Improv.
Quick on his feet is Nick Potts who plays Lord Cockburn (of course, mispronounced) and luckily he can do the Michael Caine accent when no one else can. Jen Anderson does well in a role that requires her to be a scullery maid with the manners and voice of Maggie Smith while Mark Taylor is a damn good tree and who gets most of the laughs of the evening.
Despite the slow start, the 60 minutes go by quickly, but the Improv needs to be funnier, sharper and speedier if they really want to insert laughter here.
Runs until 11 August 2023
Camden Fringe runs until 27 August 2023
