Improvised comedy troupe Thespianage have a regular monthly slot performing their games to eager fans in the back room of Gulliver's pub on Oldham Street in Manchester, and so this evening they decided to extend their remit a little and make this show a part of the Greater Manchester Fringe Festival.
The advantages to this are that hopefully they will attract new enthusiats, thus opening their audience-base and also it will create useful advertising as these improvised comedy performances are becoming extremely popular with many troupes all over, and so the competition is also much more than it used to be. Blame 'Whose Line Is It Anyway?' for popularising and making entertainment from something which, up until that point, were useful classroom exercises at drama schools! However, now we have the likes of Paul Merton, Showstoppers, and many more glamourizing and capitalising on the uniqueness of one-off never-to-be-repeated performances which are completely improvised.
Gulliver's Lounge is a rather grandiose and misleading title for a venue which is found at the rear of the pub. A tiny stage, a small portion of what a stand-up comedian performing at The Frog And Bucket or the Comedy Store would be accustomed to, with seating enough for about 30 people sardined in a rather hot and sweaty atmosphere.
Thespianage started the evening with a little warm-up from their resident MC, Paddy, who proved to be a very personable and quick-witted link between sections, although why he needed to traverse to the back of the space each time was a mystery. Just standing to one side or even taking a seat in the front row between items would have made it easier for the cast to enter / exit and make for a smoother evening altogether.
In the G M Fringe brochure, the show was advertised as being 90 minutes long (including interval), and this evening the show was running therefore some 43 minutes over schedule, which was considerable. However we were never bored and the time passed very quickly with the quick-fire wit and skills of the troupe.
Thespianage played a few 'standard' short-form impro games, alowing the audience to throw in the suggestions, and at these they excelled. Three in the first half and three in the second. The 'games' were not new ideas, but as with all these things, the audience will always bring something new and surprising to the table which will take the impro in another direction comepletely and this troupe were well experienced and handled all suggestions very well. Very funny and entertaining.
Where this show differed from other Thespianage gigs is that some of the troupe were trying something new and giving stand-up comedy a go. A couple of other friends were also invited along to do a short stand-up spot, and in the second half, they even invited along another impro group, a pair of men calling themselves, 'Absolute Onions' and specialising in the long-form style of improvisation. Rather than snappy and quick repartee, moving on to the next idea; these two took a word suggested from the audience [in this instance 'rhubarb'] and performed a 15 minute long duologue completely on the spot. Very clever.
The stand-up routines varied from the cringeworthy to the very enjoyable. Josh's ukelele songs were enjoyable, and his style and manner very appealing. His manner quite self-deprecating despite being extremely confident, and his forgetting the lyrics just made the act even funnier. Alex showed promise with his germ of an idea, having fed a computer bot lots of comedy material and left it for the bot to randomly generate a speech from it all. It was an interesting idea but the speech too long and not really very funny. However the idea itself was sound.
All told, it was a very pleasant and entertaining evening, but perhaps a little fragmented and too much of a smorgasbord of items. I truly enjoyed Thespianage's comedy, and will try and make time to visit their show again..
Reviewer - Matthew Dougall
on - 13/7/19
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