“Do you want to get sprayed by water?” is the question I’m greeted with at BATS’ Dome. This from one of the cast members of tonight’s upcoming performance. If I need a reminder of the kind of audacious energy such a show creates, this is surely it.

I haven’t reviewed for a while, so it feels safer to admit my role for the evening and to take a seat hopefully free from the effect of the miniature water balloons being distributed liberally to incoming audience.

The Milkyverse is one in a series of improvised shows by the Ruff as Gutz company, headed by Sean Burnett Dugdale-Martin. If you’ve watched previous ones, you might be more in the know than I am. For instance, as I learn later, some of the ideas are sourced from the Marvel comic books.

Five ‘Milkers’ wander in, garbed in white tunics variously inscribed, backdropped by a series of silver shimmering curtains. They are Salome Neely, Anna Barker, Sarah Penny, Adriana Dana Vasinca and Ezra Pratley. We get some ground rules from leader Sean, followed by the predictable call for scenarios from the audience. Flying two metres off the ground, opening doors from a distance and having an unusual hernia operation get a look in.

Sean designates a hero of the action – she is to be moving out of her mother’s house and into a flat with a bunch of strangers. This dialogue between mother and daughter stands out to me as one of the longest and best sustained of the evening. And we’re off.

So are the water balloons. These can be launched haphazardly at the players. Fortunately for their targets, the balloons are tiny. Nevertheless, they make their watery point at various times in the already hilarious interplay between characters.

One of the players falls over mid stage – I’m still not sure if this was improvised – but what is noteworthy is the reaction and the teamwork of the others gathering round in shared concern. Improv at its best and as such offering life lessons to us all.

And it strikes me what an interesting exercise an improvisation would be involving members of the Wellington City Council at a typical meeting – and of course with public invited and armed with water balloons! 

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