PAUL MERTON’S IMPRO CHUMS | LIVE REVIEW
Wales Millennium Centre, Mon 18 Nov
Whilst he is most well-known for his appearances on Have I Got News For You, Room 101 and Just A Minute, Merton is probably one of, if not the, most prolific and talented improvisation comedians performing in Britain today. Every Sunday he can be seen performing at The Comedy Store in London with The Comedy Store Players and for his current tour Impro Chums, he has taken this show out on the road with him, bringing along a band of fellow improvisers including his wife Suki Webster, Whose Line Is It Anyway? veteran Mike McShane and Richard Vranch.
Having never been to a live improvisation gig before, I literally had no idea what to expect until it was explained by Merton before the start of the show that it would consist of a number of games throughout the evening which would rely on suggestions shouted out by the audience, as his weekly show does. These games included Freeze Tag, where the performers start in positions suggested by the audience and have to perform snatches of dialogue before being tagged by another performer to start a new position and sketch. Die involved audience shouting a couple of conversation topics, which each performer then had to make into story. As soon as their monologue faltered, the audience was encouraged to shout ‘‘Die!’’ and let another performer take their turn. One of the highlights of the night, and perhaps the most impressive of the games, was Guess The Job. In this segment, Merton was led from the hall after explaining that the audience had to devise a profession which he had to guess through clues from the other performers when he came back into the room. Encouraged to be as specific as possible, the end profession he had to guess was the wick trimmer of a lighthouse lamp fuelled by treacle on the Isles of Scilly who wears leather chaps. Much to everyone’s surprise, after 10 minutes of ingenious clues from the others, Merton actually managed to get every single bit of it, and seemed to be unfazed by the whole thing.
While the concept is interesting, I couldn’t help but feel that if it hadn’t been in the hands of such seasoned and talented comedians, the night would have felt a string of warm ups for an amateur dramatic society (and it didn’t help that I played a couple of the exact same games in GCSE Drama). For the most part, each section was a brilliant platform for the performers to display their lightning fast wit in increasingly absurd and hilarious scenarios which changed pace or scene at the flip of a coin. The constant audience interaction in the games also added to the night, giving the whole theatre an almost pantomime atmosphere, and where all of the content is made up on the spot it is only expected that some of the material will fall flat, and when this obviously happened, the performers would often take it in their stride. However, a couple of the games really failed to make me laugh, and whilst some of the other games such as Freeze Tag were great to start off with, they did drag on for a bit too long. But even when I wasn’t laughing, it was still impossible not to be impressed by the sheer talent shown by everyone on stage, and with the nature of the show; it is very different every night, had I seen it on another night no doubt this review would also have been very different.
words: STEPHEN SPRINGATE