Comedians’ Cinema Club

Improvised comedy works well in many forms. However, what is essential for a good improvised show is experienced improvisers, and the cast tonight did not give that impression.

The format presented five comedians re-enacting the plot from the film ‘Alien’, with a cast member also dualling in the role of ‘director’, to keep the players on track of the scenes they would be covering.

To level that an improvised show is unprepared feels unfair, but with cast interactions clunky and without space to allow a comic space to be created collaboratively, it felt a struggle and unprepared. That’s not to say that there weren’t laughs, from the melee and frequent corpsing (although the on mic corpsing from the ‘director’ was distracting). The audience-sourced cast members were enjoyable gems, and the booked cast are probably highly entertaining individuals, but as an ensemble they lacked. Hopefully this was an anomaly, as the premise sounds entertaining and full of potential. This, unfortunately did not reach that height.

Republic, 14 May 2016

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