Stage Dragon: Showstopper! – Yvonne Arnaud Theatre

Published on: 7 Sep, 2018
Updated on: 7 Sep, 2018

The Showstopper! cast

By Ferenc Hepp

A platform with steps, one chair, a window, a doorway on wheels, and a small selection of basic, black and red themed costumes – oh and suggestions from the audience. That’s all Olivier Award-winning Showstoppers has to improvise a whole musical at the Yvonne Arnaud this week.

They are a regular booked here and for those not familiar with the company, they began life as a workshop at the Actors’ Centre under the leadership of Dylan Emery, Adam Meggido and Ken Campbell, who gathered a group of actors with not much experience and within a week, produced a one hour improvised musical in front of a capacity audience.

This was such a big success that Emery and Meggido went on to recruit a full company of professionals and started producing fully-fledged shows. Funding was soon secured and the show has been performed numerous times ever since, including in London, the Edinburgh Fringe and national tours. In fact, the performance in Guildford on Thursday night was show number 969.

The pace was fast, the execution of the ideas genius, the timing perfect…

Meggido was our compere on Thursday evening who gathered ideas from the audience to kick the show off. Some of the settings that were suggested included the International Space Station and a posh private school, but eventually, a medieval leisure centre was picked.

Amongst the proposed titles such as Codpiece at Dawn and Catherine The Great’s Weekend, the winning suggestion was A Joust in Time, and the musical styles which were adopted were Cabaret, Dreamgirls, Brigadoon and West Side Story.

The company comprises of numerous performers, five of whom took part in the show on Thursday under the guidance of Meggido.

Adam Meggido guides the improvised show

Having seen this company a number of times previously, I was hoping that some of my favourite cast members would make an appearance and I was not disappointed. Ruth Bratt was absolutely hilarious with her usual range of accents, voice and comic timing, adopting a character called Splodge.

Splodge who was rather partial to dunking witches in this “leisuriee centriee” from 990AD (whether the year was historically accurate was not an issue to anyone) and very much opposed to the forward-thinking characters improvised by Andrew Pugsley and Susan Harrison who were keen on revolutionary modern concepts such as turning the banqueting hall into a smoothie bar and the torture room into a squash court.

But the king, played by Philip Pellew, had something to say about all of this and the narrative eventually turned into a tragic love story with a happy ending, including introducing radical ideas for the time such as democracy and votes for women.

Some of the highlights included a brilliant Dreamgirls number by the female members of the cast, a group number all about the scallop wars in the style of Hamilton and a horseback joust in the style of High School Musical. The music was under the very talented direction of musical director Duncan Walsh Atkins, who has been working with the company since 2009.

The pace was fast, the execution of the ideas genius, the timing perfect and the individual and group songs were very impressive with a usual catchy finale number, which made the whole evening very enjoyable indeed with lots of laughter.

Showstopper! only runs until Saturday 8 September (2018) and tickets are available via the website: www.yvonne-arnaud.co.uk or by calling the box office on: 01483 440000.