Boris and Sergey’s Preposterous Improvisation Experiment.
Pulse Festival, New Wolsey Theatre.
10 June 2017
4 Stars
And here is a great way to close the Pulse Festival, Flabbergast Theatre presenting one hour of totally unscripted work, with no rehearsals and no preparation. This approach always makes me feel a little nervous as I enter the auditorium, but there were only moments when the performers seemed to run out of steam, but, of course, they made a feature out of those moments!
The troupe wisely made fun of the Pulse Festival by going through the programme, quickly noticing how many shows dealt with death, and began by presenting their version of those shows. Performed just two days after the general election, improvisation suggestions from the audience were along the lines of ‘strong and stable’, so for every time the performers looked to be clutching at straws, there were wheat fields to run through. The two puppets are endowed with huge amounts of personality from the six puppeteers, and there was excellent improvisation also from the technical team, who played around with lights and music as appropriate to the improvisation.
When the company are having fun, it’s hard to resist, and there were many moments of hilarity, especially when the audience were involved in the action. A good, light hearted way to end a festival that did veer towards the dark a lot!
FIND OUT MORE ABOUT PULSE FESTIVAL
Paul is a playwright, director, actor, academic, (he has a PhD from the University of East Anglia), teacher and theatre reviewer! His plays include Living with Luke, (UK tour 2016), Play Something, (Edinburgh Festival Fringe/Drayton Arms Theatre, London 2018), , (2019), and now The Miner’s Crow, which won the inaugural Artist’s Pick of the Fringe Award at the first ever Colchester Fringe Festival 2021. In lockdown 2020 he created the audio series Isolation Alan, available on Youtube, and performed online in the Voice Box Festival. He is the founder member of Stage Write, a Colchester based theatre company, and his acting roles include Rupert in How We Love by Annette Brook, first performed at the Vaults Festival 2020 and revived at the Arcola and at Theatre Peckham in 2021. Follow: @stagewrite_
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