SCRABBLE Unscripted has a simple enough premise that is essentially contained within the title itself: Two celebrity guest players play a game of Scrabble to one side of the stage, while a team of five Impro Australia players occasionally looks in on the board (via an ingenious rear-projection system that displays the board behind the performers) and uses the words as springboards for improvised scenes. Host Steve Lynch ran interference between the Scrabble board and the improv team, picking out the slowly building collection of words to use as fodder for the churning minds of the performers.
The improv team was comprised of veterans of the Impro Australia set Amanda Buckley, Toby Truslove, Jon Williams and Suzie Youssef, along with deadpan newcomer Steen Raskopoulos. Every member of the team was overflowing with enthusiasm and wit, launching themselves into each other’s gags with a frenetic energy.
The two guest players of the night were Dave Callan, the Irish comic whose voice will be very familiar to anyone who used to listen to his Pirate Radio show on triple j Saturday nights; along with the identically named (and identically bearded) Dave Callan, a former member of the Scrabble Unscripted team whose most recent claim to fame, it was pointed out, was starring as a carrot in the V8 commercial. The guest players certainly didn’t bring their A-game to the Scrabble board, eventually abandoning any pretext of playing the game seriously and just attempting to make as many words as possible on the board (in spite of this, they still didn’t manage to get rid of all their letters). This detracted from the premise of the show, essentially making the game element a bit redundant.
However, while the guest players and the words they generate will be different every night, no matter which elements emerge, the improv team is sure to put their heart and souls into every sketch, virtually guaranteeing a good time.
Visit the comedy festival website for bookings and further details