The late-night offering at Liverpool Improvisation Festival was the horror comedy show – The Invocation. This was a fantastic, improvised play and clearly the cast were all well-versed in the tropes of the genre as the level of detailing was excellent throughout.
The show opened with the invocation a summoning of the spirit of the evening. This was performed with the utmost sincerity and ceremony – the tension created was broken when the audience noticed the exceptionally short cloak worn by the tallest member of the ensemble Alexi Papadopoulos. The leader Ian Hayles explained that a gift had been left amongst us, after much pomp a book was found, and a word selected from it. In this instance ‘squelchy’. The perfect word for an evening of horror comedy.
In a large blast of haunting music the cast dispersed to the wings leaving the brilliant storyteller Peter Kennedy to set our scene. What emerges is the bare bones of the story and location – a tiny hotel set on the edge of a non-descript town.
Once the key facts have been established the cast burst into life firstly establishing the two holiday makers played by Jess O’Neil and Papadopoulos two insta-grammers who can barely stand to be away from their cats. You immediately want them to be the victims as they inhabit all the character traits of two extremely annoying people who you would hate to spend any time near on holiday. The joy they take in setting these two up is reincorporated throughout the work. Next, we meet the struggling hotel manager Jacob Butler and the ghoulish staff who take no notice of his attempts to legitimise the struggling establishment. What precedes is a hilarious scene in which we discover the staff ignored the origami towel workshops he sent them on.
The plotting was very good throughout as the spontaneous play ebbed and flowed. The staff slowly filling Papadopoulos up with ‘blood sausage’ one would imagine the previous visitors to the hotel. The technical aspects of the show were fantastic, delivered expertly by the Unity theatre operator Xenia Bayer who picked up and added to the story being developed by the company. This enhancement added to the atmosphere being generated by Casino Improv. It was fantastic to witness the ever-changing moods and just proves why improv of this nature works best in a fully equipped theatre.
The one minor criticism was that the work became tonally locked as the pacing of scenes was similar throughout. This does not diminish the skill on show, but with any horror, there are changes in rhythm that raise the heart rate. Casino Improv have created a great format and the entire cast were comfortable in generating material rooted in the bizarre world they had set up.
It was very reminiscent of Roald Dahl’s short stories. Each member of the ensemble were very funny and scary in equal measure. I hope this develops for the future as many people did not believe this had been created spontaneously and that is a sign of great improvised theatre.
Reviewed on 22 April 2023
The Reviews Hub Score
Horrifically enjoyable
