Is improvised comedy… popular? It certainly feels like it’s enjoying its moment in the sun, with London’s Hoopla Impro voraciously celebrating their 20th anniversary this spring, and improvised comedy shows cropping up in the unlikeliest of places (Germany, for example).
CSI are grandaddies of the scene, but on this showing they still have the puppyish and gleeful energy of new recruits, not the hangdog expression and gin-stench of a detective two weeks from retirement.
They’re blessed with an easy-to-understand format – who doesn’t love a murder mystery – and a very clear set of audience participation sections. This clarity is desperately needed with a sell-out and drunkenly raucous early-evening bank holiday crowd, who have been out in the sun for a bit too long and are a bit too keen on shouting out total nonsense just as the performers are getting into the swing of a scene.
CSI have been performing shows at Brighton Fringe for over a decade, and they’ve clearly won some returning fans. Unfortunately, one of them does pre-empt the first big joke of the show, during Lee Apsey’s charming introduction, involving the audience all playing one single detective.
From here, though, the cast do an incredible job of reining in the more refreshed audience members, through making it clear what is and isn’t expected of them without having to pause the show and explicitly tell them off.
This is an incredible skill. When another tipsy wag shouts a boring opinion mid-scene, the performer – in this case, playing a hilariously unconvincing Australian – embraces it – “oh, that was my parrot”, before miming a cage and sticking the thing in there. The audience slowly – gradually – gets the message of when to shut up, and when to interact.
Moving deftly from stupid forensic experts building the scene, to the circling suspects of who could have done the murder – in this case, of Archie Lomax, an anthropologist cut asunder by a stationery (but not stationary) compass – the characterisation, interactions, and performances are uniformly superb. It helps that the whodunnit genre is so familiar to all, because you’ve already got a canvas upon which to paint: you’re going to want familial relationships, you’re going to want hidden secrets bubbling to the surface.
The troupe make strong, confident choices and stick to them, and soon we have a bevvy of potential killers: the scheming mistress, the control-freak widow, the Frenchman who just loves drawing people naked (very amusingly played by hangdog Martin Freeman lookalike Steve Bond).
One of the skills of improv is to know when a scene has reached its zenith, and boy do these humans know their comedy apexes. Another beautiful skill is playing for the collective, not the individual. Improv – this is going to shock you – is completely made up, and sometimes a character just won’t play as important a role in the show. Sarah Kempton’s widow, for example, was hilarious, but didn’t get the stage time of others – because that’s exactly what this specific show demanded.
Keeping everyone and everything on the rails is James Cann, as the chief detective, whose job is to summarise, keep everyone up to speed, and to push the narrative along. This he does so effortlessly, half the crowd don’t even realise he’s doing it – and he’s funny, too, which obviously helps.
All in all, a glorious show, with brilliant performances from all who stood on stage. If improv is to go mainstream in the UK, it’s thanks to amazing troupes like CSI: Improvisation for keeping the dream alive.
Reviewed on 24th May
