Review by Jason Stone

Something has gone badly wrong when the people most enjoying a show are on the stage performing it . Although there's a certain vicarious pleasure to be had from watching people having fun, it's scant consolation when you're sat in the audience and feeling left out.

You get the idea that these performers really want us to know that their improv is authentic. A series of 50 games are listed on a giant board at the back of the stage and the compere uses a real bingo machine to select which of them will be played by the five participants. Then, elements of each game are selected by members of the audience.

There is no doubting that the performers have no idea what they will be expected to create before our very eyes but... so what?

If we in charge of an audition designed to assess the performers' suitability for drama school then the extraordinary effort to demonstrate the reality of the exercise might mean something. But we're not, we’re an audience hoping to be entertained. And, whether we care to admit it or not, most of us would willingly compromise on authenticity if it meant that we got to witness something worthwhile. Or, to put it another way, if you lack the ability to make genuine improvisation funny then, in the name of comedy, do the decent thing and cheat.

The first game was based on Jack And The Beanstalk. The participants had to swap roles every time a bell was rung. It became tedious almost immediately and despite the laughter on stage was about as much fun as watching a bunch of self-indulgent drama students behaving like children. And that's not a metaphor.

The second game required one of the troupe to play the role of MacGyver, the eponymous hero of an American action show from the Eighties which is constantly mocked in The Simpsons. The 'hilarious' predicament suggested by a member of the audience was that MacGyver had caught his penis in his zip. Suffice to say that the outcome was about as funny as the accident it purported to depict.

The next game was an improv version of Chinese whispers. One of the gang acted out a series of mimes to another and then the latter had to do the same to a third member of the troupe who completed the game by acting it out to a fourth. Because the audience is aware of what they're trying to do, we're supposed to find it hilarious when they go off course. But it just didn't work and it dragged on interminably.

Other games included a version of Room 101 which, regrettably, was based on the TV programme hosted by Paul Merton rather than the passage in George Orwell's 1984 that inspired it... it would have been quite gratifying to watch this lot face the sum of all their fears. 

And we were also presented with a spoof of Blind Date, which required three of the performers to act out characteristics suggested by the audience. Quite apart from anything else, the wrong selections were made by the compere who consistently opted for the easy laugh gained from a ludicrous suggestion without any regard for anyone's ability to act it out.

This is how we ended up watching one of the team trying to depict an obsession with the soul singer Chaka Khan when he literally had no idea who she was. In more capable hands this might have been funny in itself but lamely reiterating ignorance at every opportunity forced it into a hopeless cul-de-sac.

It’s in the nature of improv that some nights will be better than others so it has to be conceded that Bingo! It's All Off The Cuff might produce a better show than this but on the available evidence, that's very hard to imagine.

Review date: 17 Aug 2010
Reviewed by: Jason Stone