news

Marissa's Manchester Comedy Festival Diary - Kro Bar - 22nd Oct

There's just one show in the upstairs room at Kro Bar on Oxford Road this year, a shame as it makes a nice little venue. Do Not Adjust Your Stage are used to performing in such impromptu pub spaces as the improv troupe did a stint at the Edinburgh Fringe this year performing as part of the Peter Buckley's Free Fringe. So now on tour to the Manchester festival.

Unlike many improv troupes whose format consists of the games of the type seen on Whose Line Is It Anyway? on Channel 4 in the 1990s, DNAYS structure is one that uses TV genres to construct their parodies. Splitting the hour long show into sections that create a soap, a documentary, an American drama and a quiz show all interspersed with short news items. They do however maintain the traditional element of improv - that the topics and story lines for each section are suggested by the audience. Consequently we have a man who likes punching people in a post office as the theme of the soap, a documentary about how cannabis leads to dogging (if you don't know what it is google it, on second thoughts you'd best not...), an American drama about playing the lottery and a quiz show called Kiss My Ass – it's hard to believe that no one has dreamt this up as a quiz master catch phrase before...

Overall it's good fun, the crowd are up for it in fact I suspect some might have been on the lash for most of the day but they're all good natured and forthcoming with suggestions. The troupe look like they're having a laugh too, essential for an enjoyable improv show and they run with the suggestions running about gurning, churning out accents and creating off the wall scenarios where Frank Skinner ends up speaking with the voice of Macy Gray. Of course things occasionally go a bit pear shaped, which is one of the fun bits of improv, you're never quite sure what's going to happen next.

Visit marissaburgess.wordpress.com website here


0 Comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to Post Comments [Atom]

<< Home