Last Saturday night, the long-running Improv troupe Austentatious paid the Playhouse a visit. Austentatious, for those unacquainted, is a show in which a sextet of performers improvise a ‘lost’ Jane Austen novel on the spot, based on the audience’s suggested title. The evening opens with cast member Amy Cooke-Hudson introducing the team’s guest ‘Austen’ expert - in this case, fellow cast member Joseph Morpugo - telling us how, while Jane is best known for Pride and Prejudice (and…five other published works) she actually penned many, many more unpublished works. Nearing a thousand. To give you an idea, previous rediscovered works have included Double-O Darcy, Game of Scones, and Call Me by Darcy’s Name.
Having limited knowledge of Austen, I wondered if the references would go over my head, but I needn’t have worried. While the costuming and comedy of manners are straight out of the Regency era, the vast majority of references are instead pulled from that night’s parodied work. In my case, it was Lewis Carroll who provided the inspiration: Alice in Spinsterland was the winning suggestion. The actors nimbly assumed archetypes: there’s the plucky ingenue, the raunchy bad-influence grandmother, the world-weary father and his well-meaning but deeply useless heir. The commitment they brought to these roles, with no time to prepare, was infectiously joyful.
Ardent fans of the audience participation aspect of improv should be forewarned that it’s limited to just the title suggestions in this show. It seems a wise, and perhaps time-tested choice on Austentatious’ part, as a great deal of the show’s pleasure comes from the thrill of watching a fairly coherent narrative form before your very eyes. Throw in any further non-sequiturs and the loose ends would likely unravel the whole plot before the curtains closed.
Austentatious is an award-winning group, delighting audiences across the country for over a decade. This polish balances out the chaos beautifully, as the group clearly trusts one another’s instincts for the narrative. There’s some fun winking at the audience (‘I feel like something significant is about to be revealed…’ opines Andrew Hunter Murray’s character) but the group generally has a canny instinct for when to devolve a certain scene into a skit and when to use it to forward the plot. A particular shoutout must go to Cariad Lloyd, whose quick wit punched up every scene she was in. Also meriting praise was the live violin accompaniment, which set the scene beautifully without ever overpowering it.
It’s also deeply silly (as Alice stumbles down a hole to reach wonderland, the cast stumbles into a veritable library of orifice-based innuendos) and packed with running gags, fourth wall tapping moments and some gloriously good physical comedy as Alice and company discover the various creatures inhabiting Spinsterland. Perhaps most impressive, however, was the heartwarming and cosy ending, fully befitting an Austen novel.
At 105 minutes - not including the 15 minute intermission - this is a full evening of theatre, that delivers both laughs and heart by the bonnet-ful. Austentatious finish off their tour in Winchester this weekend, before returning to London for a twelve night run at The Arts Theatre later in November and December.