Royal & Derngate, Northampton
Josie Lawrence, Niall Ashdown and Ruth Bratt’s joyful creation in action is a delight to watch
A favourite place, a word that makes your mouth happy, and a sentence. That’s all Improbable require of their audience, and with it, their improvised musical can begin. Tonight’s finds the team dramatising – in song, sketch and object animation – Charles Wicksteed’s bequest of a park to the town of Kettering. Was Wicksteed a philanthropist, or a capitalist laundering his guilty conscience? Will two lakeside lovers ever pop one another the question? And what do eucalyptuses have to do with it?
Such is the stuff of tonight’s musical adventure, which just about weaves these extemporised strands into a coherent 80-minute whole. OK, so the time period is vague, the romantic subplot is barely tethered to the main narrative, and one or two story offers die of neglect. But the point of improv isn’t perfection. It’s teamwork, Zen-like acceptance of success and failure alike, and it’s the joy of inspired creation in action. At all of which, Improbable are past masters whose show (directed by Lee Simpson, with a band led by Christopher Ash) is a delight to watch.
Touring this autumn
