Mischief Movie Night - Arts / Tour / The Other Palace

The Bank Robbery cast did a collective video interview with London Theatre last week (https://www.facebook.com/OfficialLondonTheatre/videos/1271058069693284/) & during it Mike Bodie mentions that Lights! Camera! Improvise! is being rebranded as Movie Nights, before saying that maybe he shouldn't have mentioned it yet. Oh dear, if they're doing a run rather than just occasional nights I'm going to be bankrupt & sleep-deprived trying to see as many shows as possible!

www.whatsonstage.com/london-theatre/news/mischief-theatre-improvised-west-end-movie_44891.html

Oh my, muchly excited.

Ha ha. Following the link Dawnstar "liked" on Twitter, the tickets are coming up for sale today ... 2 shows on New Years Eve. Now, do I brave the West End on New Years Eve, or stay at home with boring telly (I've long given up on crowded pubs with p*ssed people).

Dragging this thread back up, as tonight was the first show. Was anyone other than me (rather inevitably!) there? I'm biased but I really enjoyed it. The name, colour scheme & set may have changed but otherwise it's the same as Lights! Camera! Improvise!

I may be misinterpreting your comment & stating the obvious, but you do know that it's improvised & therefor you won't be seeing the same show twice?

Yes you have totally misinterpreted my comment and I do know it is improvised.

No problem, it's fine, I'm sure we will all enjoy the show.    After Christmas Carol Goes Wrong of course ! 

I see from Twitter that Bryony got injured in this last night. From the photos it looks like a damaged arm/wrist. I wonder whether they'll get someone else in to cover while she's off or if everyone else will just get no shows off now (they were due to be rotating 1 person off per day).

ETA freckles Nancy's not supposed to be doing it but who knows what will happen now.

Probably going to see this on the 6th at 9.15pm.

Can someone explain how they choose the theme, title, etc? Like, does everyone vote before the show starts? Or they just ask a couple of audience members and that's it?

I'm so excited! I love Mischief so much!

This was my last show of the year, last night, and I loved it.

The movie improvised was "T Vet," a horror story about a Vet (Henry Shields) who inadvertently creates Dinosaurs out of people's household pets, in particular, a cat, Mitzi (Charlie Russell), who becomes a cat-dinosaur hybrid that goes on a killing rampage. The bulk of the action took place at a Cheese Factory, and the theme song, "Sexual Fondue," was performed twice by the ensemble, once as a cutaway from the action, and once as the credits rolled.

In reverse order of merit, here are the top 5 comedy performers of the evening, in my opinion:

(5) Henry Lewis: Normally, Lewis is my go-to-guy for the most laughs in any Mischief show (he's a peerless comedic performer, with an ability to engage in exuberant exaggeration, second to none), but as he was effectively the director of this movie night, who sat at the side of the stage coming up with ideas for the rest of the ensemble to act out, he never had free reign to go balls out. Still, his sarcastic commentary on the missteps of the main ensemble had me chuckling, as well as his insistence that Jonathan Sayer repeat a somewhat dangerous upside-down stunt backwards;

Digression: At school, sometimes years get split according to three levels of ability: A, B and C streams. Sometimes, I look at comedic performers that way:-

(a) A-stream comedians take a reality and exaggerate it into a hysterical bizarro dimension where people laugh before they say a word. A-stream comedians like Rowan Atkinson, Jim Carrey or Peter Sellers have a primal alchemical magic. Children laugh along with adults, without even understanding why they are laughing, which is why Mr Bean is such good family entertainment;

(b) B-stream comedians commit to an absurd reality with such finesse, that their success at finding the real within the absurd, seduces. Sitcoms and radio comedies typically catch fire when absurd scripts are put over with conviction. Successful B stream comedians lure with reams of dazzling verbiage, like Jennifer Saunders or Billy Connolly. Children may not laugh, because they don't understand the words, but adults laugh like drains;

(c) C-stream comedians can neither morph into something else, like A streamers, nor hold their truth within absurd seas, like B-streamers, but they get laughs anyway by being completely loud and shameless.

(4) Harry Kershaw: was undoubtedly top of the C-stream last night. Far too stiff to be in the A stream, and lacking the nuance to be in the B stream, his triumphant shamelessness, in loudly and proudly leading the song "Sexual Fondue" generated serious laughter;

(3) Jonathan Sayer: Typically a B-stream wordsmith, Jonathan Sayer veered sharply into A-stream territory last night when he played a man whose genetic makeup had been blended with that of a leech. Wriggling haplessly across the floor, attempting to escape a cat-dinosaur, Sayer's man-leech tragically still craved his wrist watch, perhaps his last connection to his long since forgotten humanity;

(2) Henry Shields: Shields gave an astoundingly good performance of a Dr. Frankenstein style Vet, last night. Worthy of Cumberbatch's Frankenstein, Shields successfully rooted his performance in real emotional progression. His improvisation showed facility with genre, in that he understood each and every nuance of the slow degeneration of a well-meaning scientist into an irresponsible psychopath, but more importantly, he played the part with an affecting conviction, with hilarious dividends. Top of the B-stream!

(1) Charlie Russell: The outstanding comic performer of the night was Charlie Russell, top of the A-stream. Not only did she transform into a cat, and subsequently a cat-dinosaur, with curved, lithe animal-like movements, like a committed B-Comedian, but on top of that, she overlayed the bizarro enthusiasm, exaggeration and energy of an A-stream comedian, so that everyone was laughing each and every time she did ANYTHING, whether that thing was intrinsically funny or not. Whether it was licking her own leg, as a cat, or prancing around like kangaroo velociraptor, complete with sly and deliberately delayed, sudden lizard-like attack movements, Russell fulfilled the brief of being utterly hysterically playful. And to boot, she even added a level of self-critical humanity to the strange proceedings, when as a newsreader, she insistently described the cat-dinosaur she herself was playing as "attractive."

Twenty years ago, people really used to say (and believe) that "women can't be funny." Jo Brand has had to fight that prejudice every day of her life as a stand-up comic. Last night, Charlie Russell showed that sometimes a woman can be the funniest performer of all.

4 stars for some great laughs, and a thoroughly entertaining night!

Oh thanks Steve, I wish everyone who goes can report back so we'll know the range
I was at the matine on Dec 30 and we got a thriller with elements of a musical set in Scotland and with the fantastic title too - Sheamus Can't Swim ))) I'm still dying to know where did that come from? It followed the story of Old Jim, a tireless sercher of Loch Ness monster and his son Sheamus, who obvioudly can't swim. Old Jim finds his end by the two represetative of local authority who're tired of the legend and tourists. Included a romantic storyline as well and pretty spectacular wave-diving!
I was in awe at how can one improvise for one hour and being so hilarious all the way through! My highlight was when 5 cats committed suicide one by one (a chain reaction unexpextedly iniciated by Dave Hearn)
An absolute joy! Would go again in a hearbeat! If only I lived a bit closer than 2000 miles away...