EDINBURGH 2023: Review: SHOWSTOPPER! THE IMPROVISED MUSICAL, The Pleasance Courtyard

Showstopper! The Improvised Musical is a spontaneous musical theatre comedy, featuring professional performers, enviably talented in their creativity skills in improvisation.

Usually, the lights go down and the action begins. Not so for the intrepid observers of Showstopper! the Improvised Musical. As the audience settle, we are illuminated and asked by our host, the fantastically sharp and playful Dylan Emery to help him and his hapless team invent a new musical for a demanding producer. We have 70 minutes to get the job done!

Following a little back and forth with Emery (and a near miss that nearly had us set the musical in Barbieland) we, the audience, choose to create a brand-new haunted house themed musical in the style of Guys and Dolls, Gilbert and Sullivan, The Sound of Music and The Lion King with the snappy title "The Walls are Alive with the Sound of Screaming". Cue the madness.

The unreasonably talented cast enter, using thick regional accents, and begin to craft a world that very quickly establishes familial relationships, tensions and mysterious pasts. Their ability to seamlessly create depth of character and generosity to offer the opportunity to each other to expand on the world is second to none. It’s reminiscent of an elevated Whose Line is it Anyway?

The cast includes a band of musicians, crucially contributing to the spooky atmosphere, where they somehow seamlessly creating absolute beauty. This spontaneously works at the level of crafting an amusing mostly rhyming song, inventing a dance routine and weaving a storyline into the audience’s framework. This task should be impossible, but Showstopper do this to an elite level, non-stop for 70 minutes.

Each member of the cast shines and this is in no small part down to the way they pick up cues from each other so fluidly and are willing to play so joyously. The stand out performance of the night was the manifold characterisations of the razor-sharp Ruth Bratt, who played the airy Mrs Fairweather, owner of the house, the pithy and absurdly named ‘It Doesn’t Matter’ the servant and the unintelligible, yet well-meaning gardener Martin. Yet within all this, she stole the show with a shoe-horned in, utterly beautiful Elton John-esque song that brought together so many themes of the night and ultimately and sadly (because I could have watched it all night) brought us closer to the end.

It’s often difficult to review an improv troupe because it will be different every night, however the barometer can be taken by how often you choose to go back, just to see what happens on future nights.

This show is worth revisiting multiple times, due to the quality, ability and class which is ever-present. Showstopper! The Improvised Musical is exceptional, with performances well deserving of the standing ovation it always receives.

Catch Showstopper! The Improvised Musical until 27 August 2023 (except 15 August) at The Pleasance Courtyard, The Grand at 09:10pm.

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