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Showstopper! The Improvised Musical

  • Theatre, Musicals
  • 4 out of 5 stars
  • Recommended
  1. © Geraint Lewis
    © Geraint Lewis

    Dylan Emery

  2. © Geraint Lewis
    © Geraint Lewis

    Adam Meggido, Justin Brett and Andrew Pugsley

  3. © Geraint Lewis
    © Geraint Lewis

    Andrew Pugsley, Adam Meggido, Justin Brett and Lucy Trodd

  4. © Geraint Lewis
    © Geraint Lewis

    Andrew Pugsley, Lucy Trodd, Ruth Bratt, Phillip Pellew and Justin Brett

  5. © Geraint Lewis
    © Geraint Lewis

    Dylan Emery

  6. © Geraint Lewis
    © Geraint Lewis

    Dylan Emery, Justin Brett, Ruth Bratt, Andrew Pugsley, Lucy Trodd, Adam Meggido and Philip Pellew

  7. © Geraint Lewis
    © Geraint Lewis

    Philip Pellew, Andrew Pugsley, Justin Brett, Ruth Bratt, Lucy Trodd and Adam Meggido

  8. © Geraint Lewis
    © Geraint Lewis

    Sarah-Louise Young, Andrew Pugsley, Susan Harrison and Pippa Evans

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Time Out says

4 out of 5 stars

This crowd-pleasing improv juggernaut finally makes it to the West End

'Showstopper!" will transfer to the Lyric Theatre for a series of 10 Monday performances between February and July in 2016. This review is of the 2015 run.

I’ve always thought of improv as a thing Americans are into in lieu of actual comedy. But the heartwarming success story that is Adam Meggido and Dylan Emery’s ‘Showstopper! The Improvised Musical’ is as British as an argument over how to pronounce the word ‘scone’.

Partly that’s to do with show’s current framing device, whereby the avuncular Emery very reservedly takes audience suggestions on what sort of musical his crack troops are going to whip up that evening (politely batting away the less, er, family-friendly ideas).

But I think the greatest thing about ‘Showstopper!’ –which arrives at the West End after eight years of cult success – is that at heart it’s a bit crap…  and that’s the fun of it. At the performance I attended, the phenomenally skilled performers on stage knocked up a musical about Northern Irish fairies (‘Puck Off!’). In many ways, it was atrocious, incoherent nonsense. But that’s what’s so funny, really, watching them muddle through the ludicrous task set for them, occasionally absolutely flooring you with a song pastiche so perfect it’s no wonder the programme has a section devoted to conspiracy theories about it all being a set-up.  The cast gamely knocked out a ‘Stomp’ style number (which they’d be well within their rights to have refused, ‘Stomp’ not even being a musical), a Gilbert & Sullivan patter song and a very funny ‘Les Mis’ parody and it all feels gloriously precarious and fresh.

At two hours long, it does have a tendency to bog down in plot cul-de-sacs that might have been avoided by a shorter show, and it’s probably a given that it’s laden with gags that only musical theatre nerds will get. But it is, above all, a tremendously good time, and when it clicks, it’s absolutely magical.

Andrzej Lukowski
Written by
Andrzej Lukowski

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Price:
£20. Runs 2hr
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