The lights came up on An Improbable Musical to reveal a motley gang looking like they were there to rehearse or workshop something on a stage that had a weird construction in the middle to overwhelm everyone, like the elephant in the room. Josie Lawrence – a legend at this improvisation game – strolls to the front and admits they haven’t got a clue what they are going to do, so requests three prompts from three audience members to get them started. All those on stage, except the musicians, who, I guess were also in the dark, quickly jotted down the words gleaned from the stalls from which they would create a musical. All they had to work with were the words ‘bathroom, quiche, and dripping overflow’. And this is how the show at the Hackney Empire began, writes Michael Holland.
Before I had finished thinking to myself, ‘Oh, leave off, this is never gonna work’, the band struck up a tune, and an actor poked his head up from the lower regions of the contraption while creating a bubble bath with swathes of bubble wrap. Ingenious. Already I was hooked. He then sang about the joys of bubble baths as if he was knocking out an old Sinatra classic. Impressive. Meanwhile, someone else sang about the man upstairs flooding her flat by taking too many baths. Already there was drama. Plus, they had so far covered two of the three words while we were in stitches and wondering, ‘How did they do that?’
Scene Two was a cookery group for elders with today’s dish being quiche. Tick! Word three covered and now we were truly up and running.
And so it continues, the troupe very cleverly weaving the words into an ad hoc ad lib show, that eventually had an actual beginning and an end – and a romance sub-plot – held together with some generic pieces that can be slotted in to bind it all together and give others time to think about where they are going to go next with the bath/quiche/ dripping overflow problem. And it works. And at the end everyone in the theatre let them know it worked.
Each show they do is unique inasmuch they do not know the words taken from the audience that they will have to work with, but each show will have some rather beautiful puppetry from Aya Nakamura. And you never know if it will be a comedy or tragedy because you can see each of the actors trying to throw the others off-guard with a curveball line that takes everything immediately in a different direction because, without a script to stick to, they can swerve the action round a blind corner on two wheels and leave the others to pick up the pieces to carry on. I loved it.
Getting on stage and in front of an audience is hard enough when you have rehearsed a script and learnt your lines. Hats off to those that step out there and wing it to produce a play/musical you would have paid to see.
Improbable live for improvised theatre, they have been doing it for years and years from off-Broadway to the National Theatre and they have perfected their difficult art. Catch them while you can.
Hackney Empire, 291 Mare Street, E8 1EJ until 26th October. Time: 7.30pm. Admission: £33, £16,
Booking: https://hackneyempire.co.uk
Improbable are touring in spring 2023. Check their website for details:
