Monmouth, Savoy Theatre Sat 11May
words: MAB JONES
‘Improv’ is a much misunderstood, and sadly much maligned, concept. For me, the word got ruined by seeing gaggles of well-to-do drah-mah kids making stuff up at the Edinburgh Fringe – fits of ‘fun’ and ‘frolick’ badly done, off the cuff crapola that wasn’t funny, cringingly clichéd, and highly embarrassing. In the world of comedy, improv is a delicate art, based on a blend of experience, skill, imagination, intuition, and audience engagement which the average 18-year-old hasn’t yet developed. In acting, too, there is a tendency to see improv as ‘just making things up’, when all the great improv actors have testified to the fact that this can only be achieved once they have ‘become’ the characters themselves, creating a history, habits, and so on, with which to flesh the character out.
Whether in comedy or drama, then, improv is a difficult thing. Here, Phill Jupitus superbly usurps all my ‘improv’ expectations by managing to do both, simultaneously, and successfully. He plays a series of characters who have returned from beyond death to answer questions about their lives. The questions come from us. The answers from the characters: Vernon Herschel Harley, a luvvie-like legend of stage and screen who died last Thursday at age 114; Kurt Schiffer, u-boat captain, who passed away in 1944; and the future (past?) Jupitus himself, who dies (died?) in 2052, age 90.
The wit is quick and clever, the characters deftly drawn and well-acted, the audience full of delight, laughter, and daring query. Later, Jupitus tells me that it really is down to the audience how the show turns out – if they are ‘up for it’, the show is livelier. In his words, it can be “a bit of a tightrope walk”. A shy and timid crowd, I imagine, won’t give Jupitus the ‘fuel’ he needs, but in Monmouth we are keen, firing questions that spark flights of imagination, explanation, and exposition, that veer cleverly and captivatingly between the surreal, the silly, the sometimes sombre (as in all the best comedy/theatre, there are moments of sweetness and sadness here, too), and the tightrope Jupitus mentions is expertly traversed.
High points for me were those moments of darker humour, as that is my personal taste – Vernon’s recollection of putting on am-dram theatrical productions with soldiers in No-Man’s Land, for example, and everyone immediately being shot down again, and again and again, had me in stitches – although I did very much enjoy finding out about the future from ‘Phill’, too. In particular his demise at the hands (or rather, tongues!) of a herd of ravenous honey badgers. In all, this was one of those shows which gave you the feeling that everyone who saw it, in years to come, would be saying ‘I was there’. A truly unique evening, full of wild invention, incisive wit, and an unparalleled spirit of fun, I left the theatre feeling energised, exuberant, and inspired. I give ‘You’re Probably Wondering…’ my highest recommendation – see it, if you can; again if you already have; and one more time if you’ve done that. A show that’s never the same show twice, except in the fact that it is blazingly brilliant, this was a remarkable night of comedy and theatre and I’ve never experienced anything quite like it. Joyous!