Creator: The Improvised Play
Director: Stephen Davidson
Perhaps this impro show reaps more rewards if you have actually seen Good Omens on Amazon Prime. This 60-minute show might be stuffed full of subtle jokes and Neil Gaiman Easter Eggs, all appreciated by real fans of the English author who’s currently in the news for all the wrong reasons. But for the uninitiated, Mixed Omens by The Improvised Play, is still strangely charming despite its wandering plot about an evil god called The Darkness recruiting two woodlice to spy on his unsuspecting daughter.
Director Stephen Davidson insists that the show is fully improvised but it’s hard to be totally convinced of this at times. The audience is asked for the thinnest of scenarios before the six performers embark on their fantastical story and there is no sense of plots, characters and locations being made up on the spot. Indeed, for all the audience knows, the story has been written already.
Of course, impro shows have their own structures which the cast can lean upon in the face of uncertainty, but this company’s structure seems a little too steady. In comedy impro, there is much delight in watching performers sabotage their colleagues’ efforts by suggesting outlandish twists to the unfolding tale. However, The Improvised Play defines its genre as narrative impro where, it seems to imply, the story is more important than the jokes.
So perhaps it’s not their aim to provide madcap laughter, which is just as well as the jokes here are few and far between and some scenes go on for too long, one about a scarf seems to go on interminably. These performers are too respectful of each other to interrupt, but more interventions when the story is dragging would enliven the format to no end. Everything is a little too gentle and polite when it could do with a few fireworks.
Still, the measured approach means that when the humour does appear, it lands very nicely, especially when performer Teresa Senyah discovers she has a sister she never knew she had or when Invi Brenna gets caught in their elaborate robe. These moments do seem improvised and Mixed Omens could do with more of them.
Runs until 10 August 2024
Camden Fringe runs until 25 August 2024
The Reviews Hub Score
Mixed Results
