Given All Aboard! is billed as the opening show of the New Zealand Improv Festival 2024, I guess Blip, last Friday, was the curtain raiser and Saturday was a preview night, featuring Between Friends, The Last Days of Jericho Falls and Muunboot: Welcome to the Schmuckpad. Whatever, Improv Festival week is under way!

Nautically dressed in Love Boat vibes, the Festival’s Artistic Co-Directors ‘Captain’ Matt Powell (from Te Whanganui-a-Tara/ Wellington) and ‘Bosun’ Jim Fishwick (Gadigal/ Sydney) helm a voyage that offers glimpses of ‘ports’ we may visit in the week ahead. But first they introduce the Musician, Criss Grueber (from Lyttleton), and Campbell Wright (Wanaka) on Lights.

The next crew member brought to the bridge is Bianca Casusol (Lanapehoking/ New York), wearing a piratical eye-patch. Her show – It’s Us, In The End – is on Wednesday, in the BATS Dome, 7.45pm: “Direct from the Magnet Theater in New York, this show follows characters in real time as they spend their last hour on earth. The audience suggestion will tell us how the world is ending, and we see what people choose to do with their last hour — if they even know it’s coming.”  

Bianca challenges her Captain and Bosun to play out the end of a journey of discovery. Is it places they seek, or their selves? Best line: “Without an end, a friend is just a fri.” Bosun’s watery end is poignantly evoked with the aid of lights and music.

Next up is Happy Feraren (Gadigalid ), whose Fillow Talk team will invite us to Meet the Filipinos on Friday in The Dome, 7.30pm. “The show is based on the Filipino custom of ‘pamamanhikan’, which is the meeting of the two families before the wedding.”

Happy asks us for an impossible task when attempted in Wellington, gets “wearing lip-gloss,” and adds the challenge whatever gets said by the players is misunderstood. Thus Bianca’s attempts to teach Jim and Matt to apply lip-gloss are complicated by “mirror” being heard as “mere” or “myriad”, and “applicator” as “alligator”, while “like so” sees Matt try to stitch with his applicator.

Meerschaum pipe-sucking Malcolm Morrison (Te Whanganui-a-Tara) will be double-bunking That 90s Sitcom with Maria Williams’ development show (more of that in a mo), on Friday in The Dome, 9pm: “Sitcoms: we know them and love them for their cheesy, wholesome antics. From the canned laughter, to being unemployed yet able to afford a massive apartment. That 90s Sitcom recreates what it is like to watch a Sitcom as the live studio audience and is set to be raucous fun!”

Malcolm challenges the ever-growing team to channel Friends and Seinfeld in a scene that begins with the line, “I love you but …” Happy leaps in to oblige by delivering it to Bianca: “I love you but I’m moving out.” Somehow Bianca’s luxurious four-bedroom apartment hasn’t fulfilled her dreamed-of lifestyle. Matt channels Kramer in typical manic mode, bursting in to fret about a parking warden …  

Maria Williams’ (Whakatū/ Nelson) part of the Friday show is called The Ex-Husbands Of Wilhelmina Williams and will involve songs: “Wilhemina Williams is making her triumphant return home after 4 decades away and much musical success in many countries. What happened to her husbands though? She doesn’t know!” – until the audience prompts her.

Her ask for a boring location finds her in a car park having lunch and a boring conversation with Malcolm – who mansplains the purpose of a dashboard. I love how dullness can be amusing in this context.

From Lima, Peru, Andrea Ferpo is bringing Pulsión – a Sensory Universe to The Stage on Thursday, 6.30pm: “In Pulsión, a work that always starts from the objects of the public, we will see independent stories that are constantly mixed with the story of the actress and her sensory universe. Using personal thoughts, objects, music, dance, shadows, sign and sensory language, we will delve into women’s stories that will make us wonder about the freedom and roles that we face every day in society.” 

Andrea sets up a scene in which women doing the ‘heavy lifting’ agree that just because “women together are more powerful” they shouldn’t have to do all the work. They get quite physical and “Vagina’s together” and “Read our lips” become their bywords.  

Criss at the keyboard turns out to be part of The Court Jesters (Ōtautahi/ Christchurch) who will bring The Royal Fakespeare Company to The Stage on Saturday, 6.30pm. “A troupe of travelling players create a brand-new play that Shakespeare didn’t write, but should have … (Warning: contains bard language)”

The request for a common theme in Shakespeare plays gives us, “Enemies who becomes lovers.” Matt becomes a perturbed King attended by Bianca’s bumbling Portvolio. A report of thumbs being bitten brings ‘Jim the Jock of Sydney’ to court. A duel is proposed, Maria challenges them to swap swords for feathery pens, Jim likes the idea of petals in place of blood … Thus love prevails.  

With time so spare more games are played by all – and I’m having too much fun to write coherent notes. I do recall a whimsical scene where Maria and Bianca volunteer for Malcolm’s experiment whereby they’ll swap bodies, meaning swap brains, prompting angst about where the self resides. It emerges that Malcolm advertised for volunteers on Craig’s List and somehow Jesus steps in to help, causing his mother to say, “Jesus, I didn’t raise you to have a Saviour Complex!” Gold.

I’ll leave it there. Just as there was more in this show, there is more coming up this week than has been mentioned. The creative alchemy of improv is alive and pumping at BATS. See: https://bats.co.nz/whats-on/.

Copyright © in the review belongs to the reviewer