Instant Broadway at Covert Theatre

By FRANCIS TILL

Improv is always a risky adventure, for performers as well as audiences. Add improvised songs, even chorus numbers, to the mix and you go from mere risk to the theatrical equivalent of making a High Altitude Low Orbit parachute jump.

This seasoned band of improv warriors makes it look easy, though, and for the entire 1 1/2-hours (including an intermission, which was announced by a man in a top hat) the opening-night audience at this third season of Instant Broadway spent almost every moment either laughing or getting ready to laugh.

Completely improvised, right down to the name (which the audience supplies as the play opens, by shouting out suggestions), Instant Broadway is an astonishing bit of adroit manoeuvring by a cast wearing steely theatrical discipline inside completely shambolic facades. The play itself not only stays true to whatever improbable track the audience suggests (on Thursday it was "The Stuffed Mushroom"), but is broken down quickly into at least three completely separate internal story lines.

As those story lines evolve according to the whim of the actors, they also creep together until, voila, we have, in this case, the Idol of Satan used to kill the ginger devil by a machete-wielding apprentice chef inside a trackless, wet cave, where the nature of the soul has been revealed. Stigmata, the devil's pet wolf, has eaten a dizzy blonde and been himself turned into a puddle of reddish fluff through the inspired use of an exploding, stuffed mushroom as weaponry.

And through it all, punctuating the flow at unpredictable moments, there is much, often quite inspired, singing, even lyrics worth copying down.

Of course, no one who was not there on the night will ever see that particular play and that's the beauty of improvisational theatre. More, repeat viewers (the recommended option) will probably never even see the same cast twice: only five of eight actors take the stage on any given night.

Improvisational keyboards by Chris Lam Sam, who also engages in some inspired woolly hair banging, top up this excellent adventure.