I’m always wary of reviewing improv shows, due to their fleeting nature and tendency toward the formulaic, but from my experience the late night shows at the Comedy Festival are usually a good place for the hard working comedians to come together and let off a bit of steam in front of a paying audience.  This certainly fits that bill. 

Guy Montgomery welcomes us with the charm of a 1970s TV presenter and sets us up with the proceedings of the night: this is his talk show and he’s going to interview several great, much loved New Zealanders from history.  Sort of a budget Letterman, with lots more number eight wire. 

He takes suggestions from the audience of various reasons the particular guests are on the show and these are incorporated into the interview in various ways.  He’s an unflappable host and keeps the pace cracking along well, finding particular gems to catch his interviewees out with and his own quirky sense of character. 

As in all good improv, the audience topics are also reincorporated at the end to bring a sense of completion and climax to the show and here it seems to have been structured within a certain package to highlight the skills of the performers. 

On the first night we have Nic Sampson as a pregnant Sir Ernest Rutherford, Rose Matafeo as Rachel Hunter hawking jet skis, Joseph Moore as The Feelers lead singer James Reid with his new song ‘Spapool’ and special guest Eli Mathewson as All Black Shane Jones… or at least as close an approximation to him as he could scramble from the costume pile in the dressing room in ten seconds. 

Of the impressions, Matafeo is the closest to the celebrity she’s aping, simply by virtue of the fact that Hunter’s been on TV so much in New Zealand’s Got Talent.  We’re treated to weirdly odd touching of fellow guests, vacant gazes off into space and lots of uplifting inflection in the classic Kiwi sheila style.

Moore shouts most of his performance as a rather emo Reid, but his musical skills are great… even if he only knows the chords to a tiny range of songs by The Feelers (and the audience doesn’t really want to hear any of those). 

Nic Sampson has the difficult task of imagining and livening a starchy historical figure in Rutherford, but extrapolates a pompous, bigoted jerk in the name of comedy.  Some particularly impressive cut-ins with the other guests and a brilliant finale to that character arc make the night particularly fun.

Mathewson is the only performer who doesn’t know who he’s going to be going into the performance and completely misses the mark of the All Black, but still goes into it headlong with a willingness to engage the silliness that has gone before. 

While it doesn’t push the boat out with anything particularly challenging or risky, this is certainly a show where the performers get their chance to enjoy the end of their busy week of performing without too much at stake, while an audience can look on and admire the quick wits and solid comedy skills of some of our brightest improv talent.

Copyright © in the review belongs to the reviewer