BWW Reviews: MADE UP, Soho Theatre, April 6 2012

The great "Whose Line is it Anyway" inspired improvisation boom of the 80s led to television shows like "Have I Got News For You" and sustained older formats like radio's "Just A Minute" with a new generation of comic actors. Cartoon de Salvo roots are in that history, as they have been presenting improvised work for fifteen years now and are reaching audiences for whom John Sessions and Clive Anderson are ancient history. For the Salvos' show, Made Up (at Soho Theatre until 21 April) the core company of three performers are joined by The Adventurists, a band improvising music to go with the improvised storytelling.

The show is different every night (underlined by the fact that the actors took my suggestion for a film never made, "The Thirty-Eight Steps", as the subject for their show). Audiences love improv's freewheeling looseness, the laughs that surprise fellow actors as much as anyone else and the fact that everyone knows that there is no safety net and the comedians might, just might, fall off. The tension heightens the comedy.

That is the upside - the downside is that comic ensemble acting is all about timing and timing is honed and honed in script editing and rehearsal (a luxury, of course, denied by the format). The improvised show I saw felt a little too forced, with the premise too thin to sustain a narrative that sprawled over more than an hour overly reliant on cliched characters and jokes too often dependent on stock devices - men playing women, one actor playing both lovers, intrusive sound effects.

Maybe I caught the Salvos on a bad night, but even so I would have liked to hear much more from the talented musicians on stage but strangely silent for much of the show - The Adventurists' improvised songs and musical accompaniments were a highlight. Next time, perhaps working with "The Thirty-Nine Depps", things may turn out different - in fact, the one thing we do know, is that they will.