On the Fly Impro. Grace Emily Hotel. 7 Mar 2015

 

Dashing Nick Byrne rightly brags that he was born in Adelaide. If we didn't like him before, that seals the deal. He's the quick-witted host of the On The Fly Improv Fringe presentation and he has brought it from Canberra, so to speak. It's actually pretty much home-grown since it is all about the people in the audience.

 

There's no picking on the audience, though. Audience members must volunteer or, at worst, be peer-pressured on stage to be a subject of In-Person-8. Therein they are thoroughly interviewed and then impersonated in a little improv drama.

 

There's a cast of thousands quietly screened off at the side of the tiny stage - young improv performers waiting for a cue or honing up on the mannerisms of the interviewees.

Nick brings some of them onstage to illustrate points with his subjects - one to be "painted", another to play a bike shop owner...

 

The audience members, however, are the stars.

 

It is extraordinary how well Nick eases them into being themselves. At first the women, certainly, are reticent.

 

Jenny, for instance, seems to have "don't know" as the answer to everything - until she is standing, confident, in the limelight giving a micro lecture on memes. We don't want her to stop. She is very interesting.

 

Then there is Karen, very softly spoken and shy. She has been forced up by an audience shout-out because of a slogan on her oversized t-shirt mini dress. She says she likes going to the movies. Cornered up there in the spotlight, she can't come up with the names of the movies she either likes or dislikes. But, as it happens, she, herself, has made a little Adelaide Indie movie. And suddenly she is on home ground and the audience is with her.

 

The blokes are showier. Shouted up by his mate Mike, Jim seems rather nonplussed. But Nick Byrne isn't letting dobber Mike off the hook, so he brings him up, too. And there we have two Fringe-going men who chummed up around the sporting prowess of their cycle-racing children. This is eked out into an hilarious exaggeration of teenage love and Olympian ambitions ending up in a take-over of the world's bike shops, made easier, Jim saying that... OK, we won't go there. But it was funny.

 

Last audience participant under the Nick Byrne microscope is James, who turns out to be one of the Matt Byrne musicals performers. He sings a few bars of a Mary Poppins song and plugs the show upcoming at The Arts Theatre.

 

Intermission consists of some Improv skits performed by the young crew, responding to audience suggestions. And then comes the denouement - the Improv play about Jenny, Karen, Jim, Mike and James.

 

The two actors who impersonate Jenny and Karen are stunning. They have picked up on expressions, gestures, voice intonations, laughs...They even seem to look like their subjects. The boys used broader brush strokes and ham it up beautifully. It is clear who is who, albeit the Jim impersonator completely overlooks that Jim’ has a Canadian accent.

 

Thus is it all a very merry hour at the Grace Emily, one fuelled perhaps by the odd vino, but most significantly, by the good nature of the audience participants and the on-the-spot skills of good Improv artistes.

 

Samela Harris

 

When: 7 and 9 Mar

Where: Grace Emily Hotel

Bookings: adelaidefringe.com.au