The audience and Lady Luck are in charge for this improv comedy show that sees a play ‘written’ right before your eyes.
Insert Laughter Here’s Aaron Weight comperes and guides / tortures a troupe of six players, as they react to audience-suggested genres written on a spinning wheel.
Tonight’s preview show at Norwich’s Maddermarket Theatre inspired a new documentary called Caught Red Handed, about a hidden network of Oompa Loompas infiltrating the police and the world of documentary film-making to expose Charlie Bucket’s lack of a workplace music programme. There may have been some murders on the way too.
Every night is different, depending on where the wheel lands and the interventions of Weight as host with the audience’s imagination playing a key role too. With actors on top form and with a bit of luck it can really fly; but it’s also exposing if things don’t quite work.
Tonight’s show was somewhere in the middle. The team worked best when in wordplay mode – punning on the names of chocolates for one – but seemed less comfortable in physical comedy. The slightly dry documentary genre didn’t help, and they got onto surer footing after switching to sci-fi.
For future shows spinning the wheel more often to change direction might help up the comedy ante, and mediate the relatively length admin setup of picking all the genres at the outset. Weight also needs to give the same level of guidance in early scenes as he did as the show unfolded; giving both the actors and audience some scaffolding to work with.
There is a lot of promise here. It’s always going to be a risk how it’s going to go – but that’s the beauty of the concept.
- Spin A Play is touring including Hunter Club Arts Centre, Bury St Edmunds on 25 April; Rotunda Theatre, Brighton on 10, 11, 23 and 24 May; Hen & Chickens Theatre, Camden on 1 August; and Museum of Comedy, Oxford Circus on 16 August.
