All comedy is a risk, but in particular, improv has the potential to go disastrously wrong. Plays and sketch shows which go through weeks, months, and even years of editing and rehearsal can still flop, and that’s when you’ve already written the thing.

The Impronauts’ latest offering, Improv Actually at the Corpus Playroom, suffered no such flop (although this is just one performance of five). Opening night saw a small warm-up with a scene from ‘Lord of the Engagement Rings’ – pretty self-explanatory, or so you’d think, followed by the longer story of Petunia, the Mathmo, and Brian, a man who eats hair. Our mismatched couple fall in love in the gripping and hilarious rom-com, ‘Imagine Them Naked’, featuring a whole host of awkward (but cute) characters, including a ‘Spoons manager wearing a coat made out of hairballs'. This tale of love, loss and vectors was both hilarious and moving, and you’ll never get to see it.

"Plays and sketch shows which go through weeks, months, and even years of editing and rehearsal can still flop, and that’s when you’ve already written the thing"

Each night, the audience are asked to contribute different film ideas to the cast. In the set-up of a pre-show sleepover, they pick a film you might think you know, or that they have just made up, and proceed to tear it apart from the inside outwards, adding the wildest twists and most entertaining characters. The point of improv is that it is fleeting. It’s a high-risk, high-reward genre, and being so unique it has to be held to different standards than other performances. That isn’t to say higher or lower – just different. And last night, the Impronauts exceeded every expectation of them and delivered a fantastic show.

Introducing: BAND A

The cast of this show are simply wonderful. Marie Moullet and Alex O’Bryan-Tear stole our hearts with their whirlwind love story that saw them travel from Cambridge, to Cambridge (that’s UK to Massachusetts) whilst their respective best friends, played by Isabella Leandersson and Ben Spiro, were charming, witty, and had the integral task of developing the love story of their socially awkward friends – they themselves being socially awkward proving something of a hindrance to that, with hilarious effect. Emma Plowright and James Gard cannot be forgotten, with each of their wonderful character constructions – a YouTube executive who just does not care, and the aforementioned ‘Spoons manager' – being goldmines of comic potential, Gard especially providing some of the most memorable one-liners of the show.

Also wonderful to see was the clear rapport between the cast, as well as the intuitive lighting from Benjamin Dobson, and fantastic improvised music from the pianist in the corner (who, not being mentioned on CamDram, is lost in the ether and henceforth shall be known as Mysterious Piano Man™ [Editor's note: or just Stephen Gage]). The audience was captivated, audibly ‘awh-ing’ and sighing, and of course, laughing!

"Also wonderful to see was the clear rapport between the cast"

However, I can’t pretend that it was seamless. In places, the jokes fell flat and a few hiccups in plot and staging occurred. It was also sometimes distracting to have the person filming the show stood up in the centre of the room. These are the sorts of things you wouldn’t excuse in a ‘traditional’ performance, but (with the exception of the filming) often only added to the comedy of this joyful performance. So what if it’s a little shambolic – they just made it up! As an audience, your willingness to forgive is higher than ever and the ability of the cast to sweep you up with the action on stage regardless of a few stumbles is brilliant and engaging. 

Improv is all about saying yes – so if someone asks you to queue for a ticket to this sold-out show, then you should say yes as well. Then, you should queue the next day, and every other until the end of the run because it’s guaranteed to be different every night, and I already have FOMO that I won’t get to see them all