Lights! Camera! Improvise!

There are many comedy improvisation shows at the Fringe, so you would think they each have a USP but, for many, they are defined by their audience.

However, this is the Edinburgh Fringe - where no show will ever have the same audience twice - and it simply isn’t enough to have the one variable you have no control over as your differential in an otherwise ubiquitous market. For Lights! Camera! Improvise! the rule of normal distribution proves true: the audience contains comic genius as well as banality but unfortunately audience participation, the funniest bit of the show, ends after 5 minutes. After setting a theme (Sci-Fi), location (Starbucks on the Moon), and title (Close Encounters of the Coffee Kind), the ‘director’ of the show unleashes a loose plot and we watch scenes be paused, rewound, and replayed in slow motion. The cast bumble through weak scenes and an hour is filled with not particularly inspired improv.

It’s awkward and trying and a bit like watching your little brother in his high school drama class: sort of endearing and you believe the teacher when he says the kids have potential, but you can’t help but wonder when it will end so you can go home and cook dinner.