REVIEW: Showstopper! at The Lyric Theatre

A musical composed entirely from audience suggestions, sounds like a recipe for disaster, doesn’t it? You’d be right to assume this, but you couldn’t be further from the truth with ‘Showstopper!’ A brilliant evening of improvised comedy from start to finish. 

The premise is pretty simple. The compare in charge of the evening (Dylan Emery) receives a call from a west-end producer in need of a show and works to make one within 2 hours. The place, theme and musical style are entirely down to the suggestions from the audience, then it’s up to the cast to create the musical from scratch. 

Everything within the show from the compare, to the cast and musicians, work in cohesion to create the storyline. The musicians in particular do a tremendous job of creating music that fits the current point in the show and the cast then in turn do very well to create the songs on the spot. 

What’s very impressive with the cast is the ability to make the suggestions work, though it could be said that a few suggestions weren’t very funny or very easy to work with, the cast manage to make every suggestion work. It also highlights just how well they all work together and showcases the talent to quite literally, make anything work. It’s a skill to create a 2-hour long musical with a storyline that’s engaging and humerus from a few suggestions they’ve only just heard. It must be said that performances from Ruth Bratt, Pippa Evans, and Adam Meggido were the highlights, Meggido’s Hamilton inspired pirate rap was thrilling to watch!

REVIEW: Showstopper! An Improvised Musical at the Garrick Theatre

‘I’m the safety inspector at a nuclear power plant in the former Soviet Union’ wasn’t the punchline I was expecting when I walked into the Garrick on Monday evening but I laughed none the less when I got it. 

It might be my worst nightmare to go on stage in front of about 350 people without a single idea of what to say, but The Showstoppers didn’t miss a beat. The ‘improvised musical’ really does what it says on the tin. The audience sends in suggestions for story, character, place and style and then get given what they ask for. In my case, that was a musical about out of work actors who can’t help but make their new jobs a show. Ouch. Despite it hitting a tad close to home, myself, the 6 person cast, 2 piece band and 349 other out of work theatre people laughed at our own misfortune for 75 minutes straight. 

The cast was led confidently by chairman Dylan Emery and, with fabulous versatility, sang their way through the stylings of The Rocky Horror Show, Phantom of the Opera and The Lion King. In isolation, each and every cast member boasted hugely impressive voices, and in pairing this with their impeccable comic timing, they couldn’t really go wrong. It would be remiss of me not to applaud the funny bone of my fellow audience members as well, who were not short of inspiration for the show, somehow making Chernobyl a call back for the characters, which came out of nowhere but somehow worked… (you had to be there). I guess that’s what’s great about improv shows though. They’re totally unique and that makes the night special.

REVIEW: Showstopper! The improvised musical at The Other Palace

A red ‘bat’ phone rings and lights up. Our MC for the evening picks it up and answers with one word: Cameron. And so we’re off with Showstopper, the improvised musical’s one thousandth performance.

The conceit is that ‘Cameron’ has called demanding a new hit musical. And he wants it tonight. “But I’ve literally given you 999 other musicals already,” says our MC. Fortunately, he tells Cameron, a room full of musical theatre experts is on hand to help. That’s us. And so the audience is invited to come up with the setting for the new show along with some musical styles and a title. In fact this produced one of the best ad libs of the night when the audience member who suggested the setting should be a Yorkshire soup factory in 1882 was asked, why 1882? “It was a good year for soup!” he replied, setting the bar for the cast.