Puppy Fight Social Club is a different type of show, mixing stand-up, improvisation and improvised DJ and VJ work.
The Puppy Fight crew consists of Dave Bloustien, Cale Bain and Jon Williams, all extremely gifted and well-awarded improvisers in the own right, joined by resident DJ Tom Lowndes. Each night they are joined by a variety of festival guests who will perform a five or ten minute spot, followed by the boys creating improvised sketches inspired by the performer’s set.
DJ Tom plays a variety of beats and scratches while the audience shuffles into the room before eventually launching into a video piece entitled “A Beginners Guide to Youtube” wherein a variety of viral videos are mixed together to hilarious effect. This is followed by Dave, Cale and Jon giving a brief improvised rap before bringing up their first guest for the night, Miss Sarah Bennetto. Sarah elected to accept audience suggestions before launching into a story about visiting PVC factory to acquire a board to whittle down to make a set with. This provided a variety of great hooks for some spot on impro that had the audience laughing uncontrollably.
The Puppy Fight style of improvisation gives a lot of freedom to the improvisers to just riff off whatever parts of the stand-up they feel might result in the best laughs and really frees them from the constant Monkey, Robot, Banana suggestions that tend to plague more conventional improvisation. The boys also work together extremely well, jumping in and out of scenes in what seems like practiced ease.
Following Sarah’s set and the impro that followed, second guest Eddie Ifft took to the stage and produced a blistering stand-up set. Unfortunately he appeared to stay on stage a little longer than expected, but the Puppy Fight still managed to pump out some great stuff in the little time before breaking for an interval. This was then followed by a spot from Celia Pacquola before the final set of impro. The last set of impro also had guests Rick Brown and Toby Truslove joining Dave, Jon and Cale on stage. This larger group unfortunately resulted in messier impro – the stage just isn’t big enough to allow anybody to stay out of the impro, meaning that everybody was involved whether they needed to be. This didn’t result in bad impro, but it didn’t have the polished perfection that the earlier sets managed to create.
This show is a great late night addition to the festival, providing a unique approach to impro that is sure to provide an entertaining night out.
For full booking details go to the Comedy Festival website