For those who don’t know, the structure Spontaneous Broadway starts with the introduction of the four performers, by the MC (Russell Fletcher). Then each character creates the concept of a Broadway musical, from the name of a song, provided by the audience.
In this case, the show began with Dame Helen Highwater (Genevieve Morris) performing “My Sculpture Has A Strange-Shaped Penis” from the hit musical “Censorship”. Next was “Painfully Shy In This World” from “The History Books”, in which Rosita DeSomething-Or-Other (didn’t catch the surname), apparently Columbia’s only musical theatre artist bedazzled us with her talents (Rebecca De Unamuno). Then, Gordon Subwell (Ross Daniels), the ‘amateur’ of the group, sang a duet with Ms Highwater from “Newsbreak”, in which the cleaner whose lifelong ambition to be a weatherman comes true, only to leave his fly open on screen. His anguish was brought forward with the song “Don’t Tell Me it’s Raining When Your Fly Is Open”. Finally, Chad Bradley (Geoff Paine) sang from the musical of the French Revolution, singing to his love, a working class girl called Fifi, as the aristocrat Le Count De La Rue; separated by their class, he sang to her the love ballad “Stay And We Will Have Cake”. This was the musical which the audience voted to be performed in full for the second half of the show.
It’s probably important to point out that obviously anything I saw last night will be completely different for every other show, but if the quality of the performance remains the same, you will find it just as amazing as I did. The sheer speed at which the performers brain’s must be working is quite astonishing. Sure most of the jokes they were making were the obvious ones to make (in the end I think I heard every single stereotypical French word or term that has made it into the English language used at least once), but the idea that they were able to create a full show entirely improv-based every night is nothing short of amazing (I also feel I should mention John Thorn, who accompanied each scene and each song with appropriate improvised backing music on the piano – not exactly a simple task).
We were told that later shows will feature Julia Zemiro and Cal Wilson. No complaints. Hilarious. Go see it.
For full details check out the Melbourne Comedy Festival website