Improv theatre is sweeping London – but is it actually any good?

A most peculiar form of madness has descended over London theatre-land: improv.

The opening derangement was witnessed inside the Cambridge Theatre, hosting the monthly West End residency of Showstopper! The Improvised Musical. This was reinforced the next day by Arcola theatre’s opening night of its production of The Improvised Play, running until 9th March. The final delirium can be the enjoyed over 50 hours of uninterrupted comedy improvisation across the whole weekend, starting tonight at 7pm, and extending over two days and nights until 9pm on Sunday: the 2024 London Improvathlon: the Wedding Party held at the Wilton’s Music Hall. Improvisers from across the world will be flying into London to take part in this annual improvisation endurance test, which has a theme, a director and an orchestra but no script. Interrupted by Covid, this is the first reprisal of the event since 2019, with a special kid-friendly slot on Sunday between 11am and 1pm.

Is improvised theatre actually funny?

Often the prime source of ridicule is an audience’s input, although audiences contribute to varying degrees.

In Showstopper! an immaculately dressed master of ceremony (Sean McCann) poses as a time-starved impresario requiring the audience’s help in delivering a new musical in the following 2 hours. Set in Luton airport or Downing Street? Sondheim inspired? Title? The audience is made to feel in control of the musical throughout its construction, by providing setting, musical style, various references, title, and favourite ending. A key part of the MC’s role is also to pick up the slack and re-direct the narrative by eliciting prompts from the audience if, at any point, the improvisers lose momentum.

In The Improvised Play, the audience provides just enough initial input: a decade, a location and a title and the rest is left to the two actors, Lola-Rose Maxwell and Charlie Kemp, who bring a gentle love story to a satisfying, if predictable, conclusion. But that was on one night: other nights may surprise you.

The other reason improvised theatre can be funny, and deliriously so, lies, of course, with the actors’ own skills. Improvisers first act within a few key rules, which the audience subliminally accepts, and then break them.

Despite having no set plot, the few key rules of improvised musicals, and improvised theatre-making in general, are that one cast member will break into song first and, with only a few bars, signals to the band which accompanying tune will fit the mood. Lyrics follow suit by one or more cast members. Another cast member will take the lead in shaping choreographed chorus lines, which all will then follow. Designated actors will riff off one another in the opening dialogue, setting the initial direction of the plot and the characters’ relationships: who is married to whom, who wants what and by when. If only two actors are improvising, the ground rule is that one leads and the other will always go along with it.

Having established these few ground rules, the rest is genuinely up for grabs and evolves like a jazz jamming session. Until it doesn’t. As the actors build on each other’s dialogue, they also contribute to a progressively convoluted and surreal plot. The audience is both overawed by the improvisers’ acrobatics required to fit their chosen character into the others’ contribution, when they succeed, and in stitches when they don’t. Once the direction of the story becomes predictable, the heat can be turned up even more when one cast member intentionally U-turns, throwing everyone else off track and forcing improvisers into reverse gear. As the plot spirals out of control, in an ever increasing dissonance with previous characterisations, the actors trip each other up on purpose in ever more likely wrong turns, missed shots, and out-of-place lines. Mayhem is unleashed and much merriment is had by all.

A form of comedy unlike any other, truly collaborative, ephemeral, non-repeatable, is born and dies on the day you attend.

• The Wedding Party, The London 50-hour Improvathlon plays at Wilton’s Musical Hall 8-10 March

• The Improvised Play plays at Arcola Theatre until 9th March

• Showstopper! The Improvised Musical returns to the Cambridge theatre on 15 April