REVIEW: Austentatious @ Brighton Dome

Austentatious

Brighton Dome

September 24^th

AUSTENTATIOUS is an entirely improvised comedy play in the style of regency author Jane Austen. The cast create a riotously funny new literary masterpiece, based on nothing more than a title suggested by the audience. Like balls, no two shows are ever the same. Performed in full Regency costume, with live musical accompaniment, Austentatious’s past works include ‘Bath to the Future’, ‘Strictly Come Darcy’ and ‘Mansfield Shark’.

Each person in the audience has a slip of paper with a ‘Penguin Classic’ book cover to write down a title of a ‘lost’ Austen classic, one is chosen and this wickedly sharp troupe of improvisers, all skipping around in period costume with a few chairs and plenty of alacrity, get to work on constructing a narrative that may, just, have come from the pen of Ms Austen herself. They tick the boxes of period drama fans, Austen die-hards, impro fans and people who just like to be delighted by silliness done extremely well.

The ‘lost’ Austen masterpiece recreated in the regency splendour of the Dome was ‘Virtue & Vampyres’ and had all the tropes & motifs one would expect from a regency period drama of social commentary and romantic pursuits about a family of ancient Vampyres living discreetly in Guildford. It’s prim but subtly naughty, flirtatious and utterly unctuous and the group work superbly well bouncing ideas off each other and running with them into the deepest darkest impro woods.

Austentatious Solo
Photo Credit: ©Richard Davenport 2015, Richard@rwdavenport.co.uk, 07545642134

Watching a super group of comedy folk work so seamlessly together is a joy in itself and watching them set each other up, and artfully nipping in and out of each other’s traps was delightful and then the occasional ganging up to make someone wallow in glorious improvised twaddle and it working! There’s nothing an audience likes more than a comedian who can pull off the long shot and although the team work is well rehearsed it’s the little moments of personal madness which spin out into the wider plot which makes this regency show shine.

The narrative neatly folded back up in the second half, bringing all the bonkers parts of the plot into something resembling a workable narrative, with some lovely running jokes and rather mean pressing by some of the performers on the others which brought great hilarity, this was warm and engaging entertaining. The on-stage fiddle playing from regency hottie Oliver Izod, underscoring and rather understated was perfect background to the scene setting and I loved the dramatic emotional playing to suggest, or underline the action happening on stage. The musician is a superb addition to this show and gives a regency authenticity to the silliness on stage.

Throwing an interval in makes this long form improvisation easier to digest and also gives the frantic pace of plot some time to settle in. 90 minutes of improvisation is a long ask of an audience, it is testament to the talent of this crew and their pure adorability that the time flies past.

One felt the selection process was a little unspontaneous, sifting thought the choices offered up from the audience until one was settled on, I’d rather a more chance ( and dangerous) element to the title of the evening and I felt a tiny disappointment at the Vampyres genre being the chosen one. I understand the need to filter out the endless filth that gets flung at an improvisation group and the Meta clash of genre is always a delight, but it undermined what I was expecting to be a sparkling night of wit and tingling speculations paying off.

Other than that one small gripe the troupe are well versed in deconstruction and the endless forms of parody, they tease and roll with each other’s suggestions and allow space for some occasionall fireworks and delightfully damned oddness. The evening was one filled with light hilarity and ending as it should with a dénouement of romantic attachments, “Virtue and Vampyres” was a gentle frolic around the backwaters of the lost cannon of Miss Jane Austen’s works and brought to temporary life by the every delightful and utterly charming band of improvisers which makes up this charming troupe. The Prince Regent would surely approve….