Showstopper! the improvised musical was dreamt up by a couple of actors at a London workshop and fifteen years later it’s a sell-out West End sensation. The show opened at the Edinburgh Fringe in 2008 and has been running almost continuously ever since, touring internationally and in the UK and popping up on Radio Four and at various theatres across the West End. This run plays at the Cambridge Theatre, sharing a stage with Matilda, so their the advertising, set pieces and three-piece band sit lightly on top of the set of the bigger musical.
Showstopper! still feels like a Fringe show, crafted out of pure love, not aiming for the success it has attained. Although the Fringe is bursting with improv and comedy acts, this one is special and you know it’s special as soon as it starts. Director and co-founder Dylan Emery opens the show as the emcee-playing-a-playwright. He’s got a big producer on the line who wants a big new musical to make him money. ‘What am I going to call my new musical that I have to write in 75 minutes?’ the emcee asks the audience. Now we get to throw suggestions at the cast and they have to do what we say. It’s fabulous. The skill of the cast becomes apparent as they start with our prompts and craft a cohesive, structured plot through completely improvised and hilarious scenes and songs—astounding.
Like any improv show the set is minimal and the small props proliferate, giving the cast a lot of moving parts to play with and transform. A pair of rotating bleachers, a couple of bistro chairs and tables and a conspicuous window on wheels become everything from an exclusive celebrity club to a crowded underground carriage. So where will the show take us tonight? ‘The Chelsea Flower Show!’, shouts one punter. ‘The Central Line’, says another, a grim image which this London audience can’t resist. Who wants to spend a night at the theatre stuck on the Central Line? The seediness of it is too good to pass up. Lots of references to the Haiunalt Loop ensue. The cast can make the whole of London feel local. United by seventy-five minutes of Underground in-jokes, we’re all forming the plot together and laughing at our own jokes by the interval. It speeds up and the in-jokes and pay-offs multiply by the end. It’s wonderful. The cast enjoy it as much as the audience, setting each other impossible tasks and marvelling as their cast mate rises to the challenge. The female protagonist composes and performs a Hamilton hip hop sequence on demand and got a roar of approval for it. Another actor invents a complete Shakespearean sonnet. Granted he did have the interval to work on it but he ended it on a rhyming couplet.
The actors help each other play to their strengths rather than trying to stand out. The Shakespeare guy is clearly good at making up fake Shakespearean sonnets, so the other actors set him up to do it. His love interest gives him a poem on a piece of paper: ‘Thank you, I will enjoy reading that later,’ he says, avoiding the task of making up a poem—for now. But they won’t let him get away with it. Later the emcee pauses the action and insists he read out the poem in the style of a Shakespearean sonnet, which he then does. The cast bolster each other to greater and greater heights.
One thing they all excel at are impressions, as demonstrated by the range of celebrities who appear on the Central Line—Al Pacino and Michael Caine, Rosie O’Donnell and the famous ‘GC’ (i.e. Gemma Collins from The Only Way is Essex), with an impeccable Brentwood accent. Our Central Line play, titled ‘Scarlet Fever’, hinges on a pair of star-crossed lovers who meet on the Central Line (crucially the 7:42 train), but are prevented from getting together by Rosie O’Donnell, who refuses to sign her husband’s divorce papers. The final resolution takes place at the Chelsea Flower Show, a fitting call-back to the audience’s first suggestion. The scenes in between are dotted with ideas from the audience: a montage of Tinder dates, a dance-off between Rosie O’Donnell and her love rival. One underage audience member requests ‘a Taylor Swift song!’ not once but twice. We never get to Taylor Swift but we do have a board meeting invaded by kangaroos, a pervert at the Chelsea Flower Show (“Would you like to touch my peonies?”) and a bit of love advice from Al Pacino.
The whole thing has the feel of a rag-tag Fringe show, the players still giddy from their uproarious reception. The best part is the thrill that you’ve seen a one-of-a-kind show that no one will ever see again. The directors appear after the curtain call: ‘Please tell your friends about us. We’ll be here for as long as you want us.’ This cast has been playing to full houses since 2008 and now they’re back on the West End. Go see it, make sure they sell out again. They deserve it.
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