More than acting, improv depends on the players being willing to display themselves on stage - and Racing Minds come across as a likeably old school, intellectual bunch who revel in picking apart each other's ideas, in a manner you could imagine happening down the pub (only with fewer props). Any concept that comes up - dissecting the per diem frequency of phone boxes disappearing in Rhyl, how much a sandwich might cost to rent for the sake of wanting to appear like you make your own - is tugged at and examined with a comedic rigour. There's also something of the Fitzrovia Radio Hour about them in posture - a vintage aroma.
Trivia bounces out of their improvised Comedy adventures, relayed half out of character, winking at the Audience. (Last night, we learned why Rhyl was a prime Cold War target. Such trivia may be false - I don't want to check - but is delivered with authority, which is all that matters unless you have some terrible know-it-all in the audience.) The continuity issues in improv and a knowing nod to the problems of committing to something - a voice or costume that's funny at first but ultimately limits the performer - are regularly mined for laughs and the story eats itself, sprouting and consuming its own limbs as it races toward a conclusion.
Which brings us to framework. On the night I attended audience are invested in the play's success from the off, providing the name of the story's hero, his dark secret, the location of the first scene and the title of the tale, which is told by an absent-minded grandfather for his initially ungrateful grandsprogs. The conclusion to this particular tale involved a bin-diving bank worker transforming into a lizard to thwart David Icke's plans to trigger nuclear Armageddon through phone box manipulation by ripping out his throat. This makes it seem rather more odd than it actually was.
Which brings us to framework. On the night I attended audience are invested in the play's success from the off, providing the name of the story's hero, his dark secret, the location of the first scene and the title of the tale, which is told by an absent-minded grandfather for his initially ungrateful grandsprogs. The conclusion to this particular tale involved a bin-diving bank worker transforming into a lizard to thwart David Icke's plans to trigger nuclear Armageddon through phone box manipulation by ripping out his throat. This makes it seem rather more odd than it actually was.
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Photo credit: John Cairns.
Photo credit: John Cairns.
Stray thought:
There are so many improv troupes around now, but the likely looseness of the production style makes it hard to imagine each of them working individually on TV. But could there be some kind of future in a project that cross-cut between them, flitting between stories to create some kind of bizarre anthology? You are still left with the absence of audience interactivity, which in a traditionally lean-back medium like television (at least, mass market television), is a problem. Perhaps this is something an web-bound BBC3 could tackle.
There are so many improv troupes around now, but the likely looseness of the production style makes it hard to imagine each of them working individually on TV. But could there be some kind of future in a project that cross-cut between them, flitting between stories to create some kind of bizarre anthology? You are still left with the absence of audience interactivity, which in a traditionally lean-back medium like television (at least, mass market television), is a problem. Perhaps this is something an web-bound BBC3 could tackle.
This post first appeared on The Electric Theatre, With Jerry Caesar, please read the originial post: here
