Showstopper! Edinburgh 2008

* * * * * ThreeWeeks
Knowing that they had completed a record-breaking 50 hour improvisation, I expected a lot from these guys. I wasn't disappointed, in fact I was blown away by the sheer skill and ingenuity with which they turned out a complete musical based on the audience's suggestions. We ended up with a musical about apartheid set in a Norfolk village with an upcoming bell-ringing contest, containing numbers in styles as diverse as vaudeville, Sondheim and even reggae. The real joy is not the cast's fabulous spontaneity, but that what they performed was actually good - superb vocals and dialogue that had the audience roaring with laughter. Go and see it - I can't predict what show you'll see, but it will be excellent.

* * * * * WhatsOnStage.com
Showstopper rocks! You sit amazed as a troupe of fearsomely talented individuals entertain you; not from script, not from memory: from their own on-the-spot creative abilities.

Dylan Emery plays splendid guitar and also the part of writer, inspired by the audience’s shout-out ideas. From his clipboard of words, he then directs his band of players to perform scenes or sing numbers, to play out an evolving story. Last night we were treated to a spectacle on that “famous Apartheid in Norfolk”, featuring a particularly intriguing reggae number! The joy is that tomorrow’s performance, and all the nights after, will be completely originally different.

Eased by an outstanding impro-pianist (James Lovelock/Chris Ash), this resilient cast use strong voices and musicality to create enviable harmonies from scratch, in multitudes of musical styles. The cast continually spark with inspiration, shaping the plot with twists-in-the-tale aplenty.

This is no easy ride for this company of experienced improvisers, at the merciless hand of their playwright and sniggering audience. There are moments where calm eyes must belie blind panic, and casual smirks merely suggest the absurdity of the challenge. There is entertainment in such audacity and ingenuity; the nervous tension of the unknown, combined with much hilarity. As you leave grinning, you will wonder how they can possibly muster such enthusiasm, wit and joie de vivre every night.

* * * * The Scotsman
It's a premise for a show that spells calamity, although the execution of Showstopper! is fortunately just sublime. As soon as the audience are seated, writer and compere Dylan Emery asks them to construct the basis for a musical theatre production through shouted suggestions. This can get good-naturedly rowdy during a late-night edition, and throws up a different show every time. So, for the purposes of this review, we'll be discussing A Time to Dream, a coming-of-age drama set on a goat farm on the outskirts of communist Kiev during the 1960s. It's much funnier than it sounds.

Emery is backed by keyboard player Chris Ash, and the pair form a subtle double act at the side of the stage, Ash remaining mute but getting his point across with the occasional subtly-spun musical improvisation. At one point he works in a little bit of If I Were a Rich Man to complement the action, and Emery counters with a wryly reassuring "it's not plagiarism if you don't get all the notes right".

The ensemble cast of improvisational performers from London group The Sticking Place are all excellent, with the kind of vocal skills that help to convince the crowd that this isn't just a mickey-take. Of course a lot of fun is had with the genre, but this is a show clearly in love with the musical form, and it's a treat that the denouement is affecting as well as silly.

Anyone anticipating pratfalls from the tightrope-walking challenge the cast have set themselves will be disappointed. This bunch are sharp, and some great comedy lines result amid the audience-demanded Gilbert and Sullivan, Gershwin, and 'rural' Rogers and Hammerstein imitations. Emery plays the part of instigator, requesting that the next scene be played in the style of Pinter, or that a peculiar, stumbled-upon idiom ("I was worried of you", and so on) be continued.

This run's previous hits include Red Envy and When Bombay Stars Bleed. Anyone with a love for musicals or comedy should see this show and help create another classic.

The Financial Times (Ian shuttleworth)
This has been my 20th Edinburgh season as a journalist. You might think that I’d pretty much seen it all by now. So did I, but one should never underestimate the festival’s capacity to surprise and delight. I’ve mentioned before that in recent years a number of shows have offered themselves to perform in your own house or flat; this week, however, I experienced another kind of personal presentation.

Showstopper! – The Improvised Musical has been playing on the new George Square Fringe campus dedicated to musical theatre. Its artistic director Adam Megiddo contacted me several weeks ago to ask me to write a review. Not a review of their show – not quite. They planned, for their final batch of performances, to invite a critic each night to present the company with a review of an imaginary musical, which they would then turn into reality.

It was too deliciously bonkers to resist. Almost immediately a line popped into my head: “The chorus line of roller-skating rabbis was a genuine coup de théâtre.” Dare I go that far?

By way of research, I went to see one of the company’s earlier performances, when they took ideas from the audience. The cast of six, gently nudged by Dylan Emery, created a semi-plausible musical about Norfolk/Suffolk feuding around an age-old bell-ringing competition, and somehow managed to fit into this framework a daft reggae number. The Bob Fosse-style finale was breathtaking, with Megiddo sliding on his knees to the front of the stage to cue his comrades in. I realised that, in my review, I could get away with anything. I let my most wicked impulses off the leash.

The result was an FT-style article describing a musical about a love triangle set against the backdrop of the 2008 Lambeth Conference, in which personal emotions mirrored the tensions threatening to pull apart the Anglican communion. The show was entitled Schism! How much more awkward could I be? “The book shows astounding assurance, considering that this is Mark Ravenhill’s first foray into commercial musical theatre,” I wrote, adding, with questionable taste, that some of the lyrics had been worked up from the papers of the late Sarah Kane, Ravenhill’s In-Yer-Face contemporary. I threw in some world music elements, a brace of bad-pun titles and even a couplet of lyrics. I was being a real git, but not – I hoped – an unhelpful git. I was not asking the impossible, just the very, very improbable.

On Wednesday lunchtime I met the company’s mentor and guest director Ken Campbell, who explained how he envisaged that evening’s performance working. Suddenly panic struck: it seemed I was expected to “call” every scene, specifying circumstances, tone and musical genre. I spent that afternoon, in the breaks between other shows, frantically sketching ideas.

In the event, my scribblings were unnecessary. I didn’t dare look at the company as I read out my challenge, but once they had started, they kept the show running, with occasional direction from Campbell and his lieutenant Josh Darcy (who had earlier demonstrated a remarkable approach to reciting Shakespearean soliloquies ventriloquially). Pippa Evans was touching as a female bishop, Nathan Taylor staggering as the deacon she loved but who had eyes only for hardline conservative prelate Sean McCann, the company’s leading spoken improviser.

In fact, during the Kane pastiche scene, which rapidly developed into a bisexual threesome, McCann at one point howled, “I’m an alcoholic for the love-scotch of your loins!” and after the show was astonished to be told that he had done so. It doesn’t sound much like Kane, but it’s virtually the only line from the scene that is quotable in a family paper. And yes, they were interrupted by a trio of roller-skating rabbis; as a bonus, an Argentinian imam also showed up.

The big finale “We All Must Wholly See” was far more united than the Anglican Church, and after the deserved applause had died down I picked my jaw off the stage where it had lain for the previous 40 minutes in fascination, horror and childlike pleasure that all this had been my personal command performance. It was the show of my dreams, if I had been ingesting vast amounts of cheese.

* * * * Fringe Review
Improv is a risky business at any time, in my opinion, but when you add singing and dancing into the mix you are skating on thin ice. So it was hugely fortunate we were in the safe hands of the Sticking Place, the company responsible for Showstopper!, whose members were in possesion of such exceptional skills as both improvisers and as musical theatre performers.

The stage was set as West End producer rejected our writer's (played by Dylan Emery) treatment for a musical forcing him to look to the audience for new ideas. Firstly, the theme was set, 'Redemption', the title, 'Into The Rain' , then the style 'Sondheim-meets-Ska' and finally the setting 'on a prison roof'. As you can probably tell the performers had a mountain to climb.

It was a treat to watch the company cobble together the narrative before our eyes. We had a range of comedy prisoners and mean guards. The quick-witted Ruth Bratt soon emerged as the lead, a good girl falsely imprisoned for a murder she didn't commit and with the plot in motion the music began. The opening songs were fabulous, the cast harmonising with each other beautifully in the big Sondheim-style numbers.

A high point was the first song from Sean McCann as the despotic prison warden, sung in the style of Tom Waits, it bordered on the inspired. When improvisation was in full flow it was just captivating watching the performers pluck rhymes out of the air all to the excellent piano accompaniment from James Lovelock.

Towards the end of the narrative, confusion descended and their seemed to be a slight struggle between the intention of the 'writer' and the performers which didn't make for the most satisfying climax. Yet on the whole this was first rate entertainment, exciting improvisation with the added bonus of some wonderful singing.